


How Blaine Anderson Earned His Bubble Toes

by thistidalwave



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Blaine Anderson moves in next door, six year old Mike Chang is just happy to have someone new to play with. Little does he know that in becoming friends with Blaine, he’s signed up for a lifetime of the ups and downs that come from being a gay boy in small town Ohio. Throughout the years of growing up, Blaine and Mike support each other through coming out, fights with parents, bullies, new friendships, and first dates. In the end, they just might show each other that it’s okay to be themselves, regardless of the approval of others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Blaine Anderson Earned His Bubble Toes

**Author's Note:**

> This story assumes you have (and relies upon you having) basic canon knowledge by referencing the occurrence of canon events but essentially not elaborating on the outcome of them. Wherever this occurs, you can assume this fic universe coincides with the Glee universe.
> 
> Art by [laertena.](http://laertena.livejournal.com)

  


_August 19, 2000_

When Mike Chang is around six years old, a new family moves in next door. He watches them through the neatly trimmed hedge in the front yard, his hands dug into the dirt and his eyes wide so he can be sure to get a good look at the people through the leaves without being seen spying himself. When he spots a boy his own age, he jumps to his feet and goes running into the house, sliding into the kitchen and stopping just short of smashing into the island with more control than anyone would really expect.

“Mom!” he exclaims, out of breath. “There’s a new boy next door! Can I play with him?”

“Oh, have the Andersons arrived? That boy is Blaine, Mike. You’ve met him before.”

“I have?” Mike asks.

His mom turns away from washing dishes in the sink and finally sees where he’s left a trail of dirt in his haste to get inside. “Michael! You’ve brought half the dirt from the front lawn in with you!”

Mike pouts, because even though he’s young, he’s smart enough to know that he didn’t track in that much dirt. “There’s still lots out there,” he grumbles.

He submits himself to being vigorously wiped down with a clean cloth and, after running off to his bedroom to change into a mismatched outfit of his own choosing, he tries to help clean the last of the dirt off the hallway floor and is mostly just in his mother’s way.

“Do you want to go over and see Blaine?” his mother asks when the floor is clean to her standards again. He nods quickly in response--he’s spent most of the summer playing by himself, which is all right by him, but he really wouldn’t mind having someone else to play with. Kindergarten was fun, even if a lot of the kids there were too loud.

Mike follows his mother out the front door and down the front walk to the sidewalk that leads around their crescent. He squints up into the sun and grabs onto his mother’s hand, just to make sure he doesn’t lose his way.

Before he’s even aware of it, they’ve arrived next door and his mother has let go of his hand to shake the hand of another woman. He shuffles behind her, suddenly not sure it was such a good idea to come over here.

“This is my son, Mike,” his mother is saying. “He was excited to meet Blaine--I think he must have been spying on you through the hedge.”

“I think Blaine’s upstairs, I’ll--oh! There you are. Blaine, there’s someone here to meet you.”

Mike peers around his mother’s denim covered leg to see the same curly haired boy he’d spotted before standing in front of his own mother, her hands planted firmly on his shoulders. Mike takes a tentative step out from behind his mother.

“Hi,” he mumbles. “My name’s Mike.”

Blaine lifts his fingers in a little wave. Mike mimics the movement. They stare at each other while their mothers talk about something or other overhead.

“Why don’t you two go back to our house, Mike? You can show Blaine your room,” his mother suddenly suggests, louder than the rest of the conversation she’d been having.

“Okay,” Mike agrees. He turns and walks down the steps before waiting for Blaine on the walkway. It takes him a few minutes to catch up, and when he does, he looks a bit like he’s about to puke. Mike grabs his hand as he starts to walk again.

“You’re going to be okay, right?” he asks. “Because my room is really cool, I promise.”

Blaine swallows, looking from Mike’s face to the ground to Mike’s house to his new house to his hand and back to Mike’s face. “Why are you holding my hand?”

Mike frowns and slows down a bit, the bounce in his step lost. His nerves had all been gone, but they’re starting to creep back up in his stomach. “To make you feel better,” he says. He bites his lip. “To make me feel better, too,” he adds, his voice lowered.

Blaine nods. “Okay.”

Mike smiles and pulls open the door to his house. “My room’s this way.” He leads Blaine to it, pushing open the door unceremoniously and waving Blaine inside. “Here it is. These are my toys over here. And there’s my bed.”

Blaine stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. “Cool.”

Mike frowns. “So, um, are you gonna be in first grade in the fall, too?”

“Maybe,” Blaine says.

“Maybe?” Mike is confused, because as far as he knows, you’re either going to first grade or you’re too old or too young for it.

“I’m supposed to be in kindergarten, but my dad thinks I’m smart enough for first grade already.”

“Whoa, really? That’s cool!”

Blaine blinks, then cracks a bit of a smile. “It is?”

“Yeah! If you got to be in first grade, it would be, like, cheating! _So_ cool.”

“Cool,” Blaine repeats.

\---

 _November 6, 2000_

“Mom, can I take dance classes?” Blaine asks one night at dinner, a couple months after he’s started first grade along with Mike.

“Dance classes?” his mother repeats.

“What do you need to take dance class for?” his father asks before she can say anything else.

“It’s probably because Mike takes dance now, isn’t that right, dear?” his mother says, spooning a second helping of peas onto first her own plate, then his.

Blaine nods silently, avoiding eye contact.

“He just has so much excess energy that his parents thought it would be a good place for him to go burn some of it off rather than running around making a mess of the house. He really loves it, apparently. A real prodigy, if I was told correctly,” Blaine’s mother continues explaining.

Blaine’s father grunts. “At dancing. What’s he ever going to do in his life with that sort of a talent?”

Blaine’s mother just shrugs. “It’s good for now, at least.”

“So can I take them?” Blaine asks again.

“No,” his father scoffs. “You just sit in your room reading or whatever it is you do half the time anyway. You hardly need to run off any energy.”

“But I want to learn how to dance,” Blaine protests.

“Blaine,” his mother warns, “your father said no. Now eat your peas.”

“Fine,” he grumbles, picking up his fork.

\---

 _October 22, 2001_

“It’s not hard,” Mike says patiently. “Just put your hands like this, see, and then you’ll go one hand at a time across. You don’t have to try to swing across two at a time or anything at first.” He demonstrates, swinging out onto the yellow monkey bars and making his way across and then back in what seems to Blaine like record time.

“I’m never gonna be able to do it,” Blaine mumbles, barely loud enough to be heard.

“Sure you are,” Mike counters. “Just try.”

Blaine puts a gloved hand on the first bar, but Mike reaches to stop him. “You’ll slip off if you wear those. Give them to me.” Blaine peels the gloves off and hands them over to Mike, who balls them up and stuffs them in the pocket of his jacket. He nods to the monkey bars, and Blaine bites his lip.

“I don’t want to,” Blaine says all in a rush. “I know I was trying before and that’s why you came over here to try to help me, but I don’t want to.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Mike hops down to the ground and looks up at Blaine. “I’ll be down here if you fall. It’s not that far. I’ve fallen before.”

Blaine takes a deep breath. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Mike replies firmly, and Blaine believes him, because they’ve been best friends for more than a year now, so Mike would definitely never lie to him.

Blaine grabs onto the first bar with both hands, feeling a burst of sudden courage, and starts making his way across. He’s moving his hands just like Mike had, making it one bar, two bars, three bars--and just as he’s reaching for the fourth bar his hand slips and he feels himself falling.

He lands with a grunt right on top of Mike, who makes a noise not unlike a shriek, except it’s just loud enough for Blaine to hear it right in his ear and that’s it.

Later that night, when Blaine tells his parents how Mike sprained his wrist, his mother tuts and asks if he apologized (to which Blaine protests an indignant ‘yes, of course!’) and his father looks at him with something like shame in his eyes and asks why he needed help with the monkey bars anyway (to which Blaine just shrugs and stuffs his mouth full of potatoes).

\---

 _January 16, 2003_

“It’s just a stupid joke,” Blaine mutters to himself. He scrubs at his hands, avoiding looking at his likely puffed up and pink from crying face in the mirror. He stares down at the permanent marker on his hands and paint stains on his clothes. His mother is going to be so mad at him.

“Blaine? Are you in here?” Mike pushes open the bathroom door and frowns when he spots Blaine by the sinks. “Where did you go?”

“Someone spilled paint all over me,” Blaine says. “I’m cleaning up.”

“On purpose?” Mike asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Blaine bites the inside of his lip. “It was just a stupid joke,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Mike balls up his fists. “Who was it? I’ll punch them.”

“That won’t help,” Blaine says, pulling paper towel out of the dispenser to dry off his hands.

“Sure, it will,” Mike insists. “Who?”

“It won’t,” Blaine repeats. “I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to try to beat them up.”

Mike stops making fists. “I’m not going to beat them up. Now tell me.”

Blaine snorts, tossing his paper towel into the garbage. “Good try.”

“People are jerks,” Mike says.

Blaine shrugs and walks past Mike to get out of the bathroom. “I’ll be fine.”

\---

 _April 22, 2004_

It’s their fourth grade field trip to the museum, but Blaine and Mike can’t really care less about the historical artifacts and stuff that their teacher keeps blathering on about. They’re much more excited about spending the entire bus ride as bus buddies playing Pokemon with each other.

“Did you bring it?” Mike asks eagerly in the classroom before the bus is ready for them to get on.

Blaine pulls his black Game Boy Advance SP out of his backpack and hands it over. Mike pulls his own Game Boy Advance out of his bag and gives it to Blaine. They’ve taken to swapping devices because Mike wants the SP badly, but his parents can’t afford to get him a new Game Boy, and Blaine doesn’t mind so much, but his parents insisted on buying him the newest model.

They get seated on the bus near the middle, which is neither desirable nor undesirable, just okay, and they spend the entire bus ride on their respective Game Boys, one sometimes asking the other what part of the game they’re at and both of them exclaiming over their battle successes.

Across the aisle, sitting by herself, Lucy Fabray watches them, her own pink Game Boy resting in her lap.

It isn’t until after they’ve been on the museum tour (which, if you ask Blaine and Mike, was entirely too boring, had too many lectures and videos--and what were those rocks there for, anyway?) and have filed back onto the bus with strict orders to sit in the same spots they’d sat in on the way to the museum that two things happen in quick succession.

First, as the bus shifts into gear and starts to move, Mike pulls a cable out of his bag and shows it to Blaine in a silent question. Blaine nods, and Mike sets to work connecting their Game Boys together.

Second, as the bus pulls into traffic and settles into a steady speed, Lucy works up the courage to slide to the end of her seat and say, “Hey. Can I play with you guys?”

Mike turns around to look at Lucy. Blaine stares over at her. It’s not that they don’t know who she is--everyone knows who Lucy Caboosey is, and that’s why it’s so surprising that she’s talking to them. Blaine had actually subconsciously thought that she’d maybe forgotten how.

Lucy holds up her Game Boy in a sort of explanation, feeling stupid with them gawking at her like that. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn’t have said anything, but neither Blaine nor Mike have ever made fun of her, so she thought maybe they would at least politely decline if that’s what they were going to do.

Blaine finally recovers from the shock. “Uh, we only have the one cable,” he says, gesturing to it. “What game are you playing?”

“Pokemon Ruby,” she replies. She’d figured out which game they were playing by what they were saying and put the same one in.

“Pokemon?” Mike asks. “Really?”

Lucy nods. “I have another cable,” she says cautiously. “I could hook it into yours. I sometimes play with my younger cousins.”

Blaine and Mike exchange a look. Mike shrugs. “Sure, okay.”

Lucy beams. Blaine is struck by how good a look it is for her, even behind the glasses and bangs. He wishes she had a reason to smile more often.

They play Pokemon together the whole way back to the school, and Blaine and Mike discover that Lucy is pretty darn good at it, (and surprisingly their classmates don’t make any smart comments about them associating with ‘The Caboose’ like Blaine had half expected them to), but after that the school year seems to end quickly and neither of them ever really talk to Lucy again.

\---

 _July 12, 2005_

“Are you wearing a pink shirt?” Mike asks when Blaine comes out of his house to meet him to walk to the park together.

Blaine looks down at himself. “Um, yes?”

Mike looks pained. “Blaine, we’re going to go play baseball with the guys. You know they’ll make fun of you.”

“It was the only clean shirt I had left,” Blaine mutters.

“I figured, Blaine, but they’re not going to care. Just wear the least dirty dirty one.”

Blaine disappears back in his house and comes back out two minutes later wearing a black long sleeved shirt. Mike nods his approval.

It turns out not to matter. Despite the practice Blaine’s been putting in on his swing and pitch, they haven’t improved, and Noah Puckerman makes an offhand comment about Blaine being weak that starts Azimio Adams off and when Blaine gets home he’s exhausted and fighting back tears.

Mike picks up the phone to call Blaine ten minutes after he gets home, but ends up putting it back down without dialling.

\---

 _September 29, 2006_

“This is lame,” Mike announces loudly in order to be heard over the thumping bass of the music. Blaine looks around at the orange and yellow decorations of the school gymnasium coupled with the middle school students all dancing (more like flailing about) in the middle of the floor and has to agree. “We should have asked dates.”

“You were too nervous to ask anyone,” Blaine points out, leaning back against the wall and shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Yeah, so why didn’t you?”

Blaine shrugs. There hadn’t really been a girl he’d wanted to ask to the fall dance, to be perfectly honest, even though one of the most good looking girls in their class was apparently here solo and he’d been her partner for an art project for the past week. “I have to keep you company, don’t I?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Do you think it’s quiet in the bathroom?”

“Probably. Quieter, anyway.”

“I’m going there,” Mike says, turning on the heel of his sneaker and stalking off. Blaine hurries after him, not really wanting to stand against the wall by himself.

They open the door to the boys’ bathroom to find Puck standing over a sink with a plastic cup of what Blaine assumes to be punch and a glass bottle of what Blaine assumes to be some kind of alcohol, pouring the alcohol into his cup. He looks up when they walk in and immediately stops, capping the bottle and shoving it into his jacket pocket.

“You saw _nothing_ ,” Puck spits as he slides past Blaine to get out the door.

“Ooookay,” Mike says when Puck is gone. “I think we could just... go home. What do you say?”

“Agreed,” Blaine says.

“I’ll call my mom.”

Later, when Blaine is lying in bed, he thinks about what the dance would have been like if he’d actually taken a date. It might have been more fun--or maybe it would have been a total disaster.

He wouldn’t mind going with a girl, though, especially one that liked to dance. Girls looked easy to dance with, all light and airy in their dresses, so that you could spin them around and watch the fabric spin out. In his mind, the girl he’d been picturing dancing with turns into a boy and the dance turns slower, and Blaine can feel pseudo butterflies in his stomach.

It’s a weird feeling, knowing that something that makes him so happy is so _strange_. He can’t relate to all the things he hears the other guys say about girls; he still only thinks of them as friends. But he can apply it to other boys easily.

Blaine closes his eyes and tries to make his mind go blank. Thinking about his feelings makes his head hurt too much.

\---

 _December 26, 2006_

When the phone rings around two in the afternoon the day after the twenty-fifth, Blaine isn’t surprised to pick it up and hear Mike’s excited voice on the other end of the line.

“Dude! What did you get? I got an XBox 360, it’s totally awesome, and some new games for the Nintendo, and some comic books and other stuff.”

“Hey, Mike, can I tell you something?” Blaine blurts out before he can chicken out.

“Sure, go ahead,” Mike says cheerfully.

Blaine closes his eyes. “It’s something I haven’t told anyone else. You can’t tell anyone, either, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise, Blaine, man.”

He takes a deep breath. “I’m gay.”

The receiver is quiet a moment. Then Mike says, “Cool, dude. Good to know. Not a big surprise, to be perfectly honest. What did you get for Christmas, though?”

Blaine nearly drops the phone out of happiness that Mike didn’t hang up or tell him he was gross or refuse to be his friend anymore. “Oh, uh, just some books I’ve been wanting. Some money in my school fund. Things like that.”

Mike makes a snorting noise. “Can you come over? You need to check out this XBox.”

“I’ll be right there.”

\---

 _March 4, 2007_

“Are you almost done?” Mike asks impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other in the middle of his bedroom.

“Just about,” Blaine says. He’s stretched out across Mike’s bed, finishing up homework that’s due the next day. Mike had finished his own a good ten minutes ago. “Weren’t you going to change or something?”

“Right, yes,” Mike says, turning back to his closet and pulling out a plain black T-shirt that already has some sort of curious stain on the bottom hem at random. He throws it over his desk chair and starts to unbutton the top button of the gray button down he’d been forced to wear to Sunday brunch with his grandparents earlier. He pauses and looks at Blaine, who is punching something into his calculator and scribbling on the page. “Can you turn around?” he blurts out.

Blaine looks up at him. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says, embarrassed. “I’m changing.”

Blaine frowns and turns back to his work. “I’m not looking,” he assures Mike truthfully. He tries to go back to the problem he was on, but the work he has written down suddenly doesn’t make any sense. He’s seen Mike shirtless plenty of times--what’s his problem now?

Blaine slams his textbook shut. “I’m done,” he says. “You’re going to play football at the park?”

“That was the plan, yeah,” Mike says, scratching at the back of his head. His T-shirt rides up a bit, but Blaine refrains from pointing it out like he normally would have. Mike puts his hand down. “Are you coming?”

“I think I’ll pass on this one,” Blaine says. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

\---

 _May 17, 2007_

“I’ve had enough of this.” Blaine throws his pen at the table. It lands with an unsatisfying thunk on his binder.

Mike looks up from his review booklet. “Is the geography finally getting to you?” he asks.

Blaine glares at him from across the Andersons’ dining room table. “No. I’m not talking about the _schoolwork_ ,” he says disdainfully, as if it should be obvious. Which, Mike considers, it kind of is. He’d just really rather not admit it.

“What are you talking about then?” Mike asks, putting down his own pen carefully.

Blaine opens his mouth to say something, then abruptly closes it again and stares at Mike. “I—look. Just because I told you I’m gay doesn’t mean I like you.”

Mike wants to disappear. “What? I don’t think—“

“Yes, you do,” Blaine interrupts. “You keep acting all nervous and weird. I’ve noticed and you think I haven’t, but I have. I know you said you knew before, but if having it confirmed makes you this weird, I sort of wish I’d never said anything.”

“I—God. Blaine, I’m sorry. You really don’t like me?”

“I really don’t like you. I mean, I like you, I just, not like _that_.” Blaine’s cheeks are coloured a delicate shade of red. “You’re my best friend. That would be really weird.”

“ _So_ weird,” Mike agrees. “I don’t know why I thought that you were crushing on me.”

Blaine shrugs. “Whatever. As long as you stop acting weird already. I’m tired of it.”

Mike nods vigorously.

\---

 _August 28, 2007_

“Honey, there was a phone call for you while you were over at Mike’s,” Blaine’s mother says to him at dinner in late August.

Blaine makes sure to swallow his chicken completely before answering. “Oh? Who was it?”

“That girl you went on a date with last week.”

Blaine freezes, his hand halfway to picking up his glass of water. He recovers quickly and picks it up, taking a sip. “What did she want?”

“She asked if you could call her back, that’s all,” his mother says. Blaine breathes a silent sigh of relief.

“How was that date, Blaine?” his father cuts in, looking expectantly at Blaine.

Blaine clears his throat. “It was, uh, fine. We went to a movie. She was nice.”

His father looks at him with an appraising expression. “Her parents are sure to have brought up a nice young lady indeed,” he says. “Are you going to go on another date with her?”

Blaine considers his options. The answer is most definitely no, as he actually told the girl that he is gay and was only going on a date with her because of pressure from his father. She’d been okay with it, which was really quite nice of her, and since she was calling, Blaine figured he could pass any future outings with her off as dates. It wouldn’t be very fair to her, and he’d feel bad about it, but he could do it.

Or he could just tell his father and mother the truth. He could stop hiding.

He puts down his fork.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says.

His father looks a bit confused. “Why not? You said she was nice, didn’t you? Is she not good looking enough for you? Let me tell you, Blaine, there is more to a girl than her looks.”

“I’m not going to go on another date with her because I’m gay,” Blaine says, spitting the words out all in a rush, staring straight down at his still half full plate.

He’s pretty sure he hears his mother audibly gasp. He chances a look up at his father. He’s staring at him with stony eyes.

“What did you say?”

“I’m gay,” Blaine repeats, even though he knows his father heard him the first time. “I don’t want to date a girl.”

His father continues to stare at him with that hardened look in his eyes. Blaine starts to feel like maybe he’ll turn to stone if he keeps sitting there long enough.

“You must be mistaken, Blaine. You’re just confused. It’s just this one girl you don’t--”

“Mom, stop,” Blaine interrupts, finally looking away from his father. “It’s not just her. I don’t want to date _any_ girls. I find boys attractive. I’d like to marry one someday, not that I can actually do that in Ohio. I’m gay, and--”

“Blaine,” his father says, “if you could please excuse yourself from the dinner table.”

Blaine stares at his father. “What?”

“Please just leave. Go.”

Blaine stands and walks away from the table, leaving his unfinished plate of food sitting there. If they’re going to make him go away, they can clean up his damn food, he thinks.

He sits down on his bed and stares at his closed bedroom door. He supposes that at least it’s a good thing they haven’t kicked him out of the house. At least, not yet. Maybe that’s what they’re planning to do next. Maybe he should start packing. He looks over at his closet, but doesn’t move.

He picks up his phone and dials Mike’s number. Mike picks up almost immediately.

“Hey, Blaine,” he says. “Shouldn’t you still be cleaning up from dinner?”

“I came out to my parents.”

“Oh. How’d they take it?”

Blaine shudders out a sigh. “Not well,” he says shakily. “My dad just sort of... stared at me, and my mom tried to say it was a phase, and when I said it wasn’t my dad asked me to leave the table. So I’m in my room.”

Mike is quiet for a moment. “Maybe they’re just surprised. They’ll come around, right?”

“I don’t know, Mike. They seemed... really not cool with it. I know you are, but... not everyone is you.”

“That’s shit. They’re your parents. They should love you unconditionally.”

“They should,” Blaine agrees. He glances at the door. “Hey, Mike?”

“Yeah, man?”

“If my dad tells me I have to leave the house, can I stay at your place?” Blaine pulls his legs up on the bed and wraps an arm around them, resting his chin in his knees.

“Of course,” Mike says, as if anything else would be blasphemous. “I don’t even care what my parents have to say about it, there’s always a place here for you. But your dad won’t make you leave.”

“I hope you’re right,” Blaine says quietly.

Mike sighs. “I hope I’m right, too,” he mutters. “Do you want to come over right now? Or do you think you should hang around?”

Blaine thinks about it. “I’ll stay here for a bit and see what happens.”

“Okay. Call me?”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks. And Blaine?”

“Yeah?”

“Congrats on coming out.”

Blaine snorts. “Thanks, bro.”

\---

 _September 5, 2007_

Blaine can’t really remember much before they moved to Lima, but he remembers their old kitchen. It had light blue cupboards that were baby proofed, so he could try to open them all he wanted and they would just snap shut again. He spent a lot of time doing that, but every so often he would get bored and start getting in the way of his mother’s cooking. Usually when that happened, she would just put him in his playpen or send him to his room, but one time--he doesn’t know why--she let him help her bake a cake.

He doesn’t know what the cake was for. He can barely even remember what kind of cake it was, just that it might have been white--it definitely wasn’t chocolate, anyway. He just remembers her red apron, the one she only wore to bake and even then usually only around Christmas (he’s fairly sure the memory is from the summer), and that he knocked over a bag of sugar and she didn’t even snap at him--just laughed and cleaned it up.

He’s pretty sure he got egg shell in the batter, too, but she just mixed it in with a wink in his direction and they ate it anyway.

Blaine clings to that memory.

Especially because sometimes he’s not sure if it’s real. He’s not sure the woman in that memory still exists, and if she doesn’t, how can he be sure she ever really existed at all?

\---

 _November 9, 2007_

Mike pauses his video game at the precise moment that Blaine bursts through his bedroom door and flops face down onto the bed, the door swinging in a perfect arc to close behind him. Mike shuts off the television set and tosses his controller onto a pile of dirty laundry he hasn’t cleaned up yet.

“Bad day?” he asks, just because it’s what one does when their best friend comes storming into their room.

“Rather,” Blaine answers.

Mike pats Blaine’s socked foot. “He’ll come around. He loves you. That’s something.”

Blaine snorts. “I’m just sick of fighting with him every fucking day. Turn that back on. What do you have in there? It better be something with explosions.”

“Uh, it was actually Pokemon, but I’ll switch over to the XBox so you can blow some shit up, dude, no worries.”

Blaine sits up and grabs a controller. “You’re the best, has anyone ever told you that?”

“In fact, no, I haven’t heard that one in far too long,” Mike teases.

“Lies.”

“Yeah, or you wouldn’t have a reason to say it anymore.”

“That’s fucked.”

“I’d say so’s your mom, but I respect her too much for that.”

\---

 _May 5, 2008_

Puck fiddles with an eraser on his desk, pulling it apart like he used to in elementary school so he could throw the little bits across the room into people’s hair. It’s not as amusing nowadays, but he sets a teeny piece at the corner of his desk and flicks it straight toward a blonde at the front of the room. It buries itself right in her hair, prompting her to lift her hand to her neck and turn to look back to see where it came from. He adopts an innocent (read: zoned out) expression and thinks _bulls eye_. (Maybe it is as amusing nowadays. Who can blame him, really.)

She turns back to the front, and Puck resumes scanning the room, his eyes stopping on one Blaine Anderson. He is, studious as ever, the devil, copying down whatever notes the teacher is writing on the board. Something about--whatever, Puck isn’t even sure what class this is. He thinks probably math, because there are numbers on the board up there. He doesn’t care.

He’s much more occupied with the way Anderson’s hair curls at the back of his neck and the way his lips are pouted in concentration as he listens and copies. What Puck wouldn’t give to have those lips on his dick and his fingers wrapped up in those curls...

Except no, because Puck isn’t a _fag_. He’s undeniably attracted to girls--he would bone that blonde girl he’d flicked the bit of eraser at any day. Anderson can do whatever he wants with his business, everyone knows that he’s a raging homo, but to drag Puck into it is just cruel.

Puck looks away from Anderson, down at the notebook full of paper sitting in front of him. He tears a piece out in a fit of rage and folds it carefully into a perfect paper airplane with crisp, clean folds pushed hard into the paper with his anger. He looks over at Anderson again and feels that flood of feeling in his lower gut.

He tosses the paper airplane at Anderson. It hits him right in the ear.

 _Bulls eye_ , Puck thinks. He isn’t amused.

\---

 _August 3, 2008_

“So, I don’t think I’m going to go to McKinley,” Blaine says conversationally. Mike nearly chokes on his Fresca and ends up spitting half the gulp he’d just taken from his can out onto the dirt of his backyard.

“What? Why not?”

Blaine frowns. “You’ve seen how it is for me at school. It’s just going to get worse in high school.”

“Yeah, but that’s the same at any school, isn’t it? You’d at least have me at McKinley.” Mike fiddles with a blade of grass, avoiding eye contact with Blaine.

“There’s a private, all boys school in Westerville. It’s called Dalton Academy. They have a zero tolerance policy for bullying, and my dad agreed that I can transfer there.”

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Westerville is two hours away from Lima,” he points out.

Blaine shrugs. “Yeah, but they have a good academics program, too. It’s kind of worth the money and the commute.”

“So it’s been decided,” Mike says flatly.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“You’re going to leave me on my own.”

Blaine stares at Mike. “You’ll make friends at McKinley, Mike. You won’t be on your own.”

Mike stands, brushing grass and dirt off his jeans. “It’s nearly dinner time,” he says without looking at his phone to check the time. “I’m going inside.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Mike,” Blaine says to Mike’s retreating backside.

Mike waves over his shoulder just before he disappears inside his house.

\---

 _August 4, 2008_

When Blaine’s phone rings the next day, he literally throws himself off his bed in his haste to answer it.

“Mike?”

“Blaine,” Mike says. “I’ve decided I’m not mad at you or anything, even though I probably made you think I was. I can’t really blame you for wanting to get away from Puck and those guys.”

Blaine breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. I thought--”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Mike interrupts. “It’s all cool, as long as we keep each other up to date on what’s going on with each other, right?”

“Of course,” Blaine agrees. “We both have cell phones and everything. It’ll be fine.”

\---

 _August 29, 2008_

High school isn’t as scary as Mike expected it to be. Sure, there are more people crowding the hallways, which is annoying, and the lockers are smaller, which is annoying, and Blaine isn’t with him, which is just sad, but his classes seem like they’ll be a piece of cake and no one has bothered him all day. He’d even passed Puckerman in the hallway and only received a nod of acknowledgement in response compared to the locker slam a loud spoken girl named Rachel Berry that Puck apparently already knew from Temple got.

It’s been an okay day for Mike, as far as days go.

 _3:18 PM Blaine Anderson_  
First day woes?

 _3:20 PM Mike Chang_  
None to speak of, really. You?

 _3:22 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I spent the day in a building full of well behaved young men wearing blazers. No woes. ;)

Mike chuckles at his phone screen and looks up at the piece of paper he’s been staring at for a good few minutes already. It’s slapped right in the middle of the bulletin board labelled ‘AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES’, though it’s clear that it’s been moved down a bit to make way for the Cheerios sign up sheet in the prime position. Printed on beige paper, the top says ‘McKinley High Titans - Freshman Tryouts’, with a time underneath, followed by some lines to put your name down. There are already a few names--including, Mike’s read, Noah Puckerman, David Karofsky, and Azimio Adams.

His fingers are itching to add his name to the list, but he can’t quite seem to make them reach for his pen.

“Hey,” a voice says from his left. He turns toward the voice to see a dark skinned boy about his own height, thumbs tucked into the pockets of his jeans. “Are you thinking about trying out for football?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mike says. “Thinking. You?”

“I thought I would, but I don’t know anybody here. I’m new--I mean, I know all the freshmen are new, but I didn’t come from any of the middle schools around here,” the guy says awkwardly, leaning back on his heels.

“Oh, cool. I’m Mike Chang. Well, Michael, but definitely stick to Mike.” Mike sticks out his hand.

The guy looks down at it, his face twisting into an amused smile. Mike immediately feels stupid, but the guy takes his hand and shakes it firmly. “I’m Matt Rutherford. Matthew, but stick to Matt.”

Mike smiles. “Sure thing.” He turns back to the sign up sheet. “So, should we write our names on this sucker or what?”

Matt holds out a pen.

\---

 _September 25, 2008_

Blaine has always loved music. When he was little, he had a cassette player with a microphone and he would play cassette tapes in it and sing along in his bedroom. He graduated with technology up to a Walkman, then to a CD player with a discman, and then a five disc changer, and then just an iPod dock to go with his iPod. Throughout the years, his trusty full length mirror was there to applaud him at the closing of every song.

Blaine can feel his fingernails digging into his palms. What if they hate him? What if they don’t applaud at all, not even just to be polite? What if he’s a terrible singer? Oh God, he’s sweating buckets already. What if--

“Blaine Anderson?”

“That’s me!” Blaine jumps to his feet.

The upperclassman smiles a little and gestures to the double doors. “Right through here. You’re up. And don’t worry, we’re not too harsh.”

Blaine appreciates the encouragement, but he can’t stop himself. He doesn’t know why he ever thought putting down the Warblers for his extra curricular was a good idea.

Well, that’s a lie.

But he’s terrified, so forgive him if his mind is a bit one track at the moment.

Singing, for so long, has been a way for Blaine to escape from everything. Most of the time he didn’t really know what he was escaping _from_ , but putting on the latest hit song and belting out every last note always released some of the tension he felt building up in his toes and lower stomach.

And now he’s supposed to sing in front of other people?

He swallows. Maybe it’s not too late to back out of this.

“Whenever you’re ready,” the Warbler that showed him in says, having already sat down. When did they get in here? Blaine isn’t sure. Who are all these people? He has no idea. He tries to imagine what it would be like to leave right now. He thinks the humiliation might be even worse than if he just tried to sing.

He closes his eyes. He can do this, because his audience is his mirror. If he opened his eyes, he would see himself looking back. He opens his mouth. And he sings.

It’s the same song that everyone would have heard if they listened to the radio for any length of time that day. Blaine imagines the back beat and bobs his head to it, but thankfully has enough restraint to stop himself from going completely dance crazy. He even manages to open his eyes about halfway through the song and--hey! He doesn’t keel over. It isn’t too bad.

They do applaud after. They don’t hate him, either, because they immediately all agree that he can join.

“Welcome to the Warblers, Blaine Anderson!” the upperclassman declares. There’s a cheer from the boys he’d been pretending were his mirror. He grins. He can’t help it.

He feels included.

 _3:26 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Dude. Guess. What.

 _3:27 PM Mike Chang_  
Flying monkeys on the moon?

 _3:28 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I’M A WARBLER.

 _3:30 PM Mike Chang_  
You’re a bird?

“No, you idiot, I got into the a cappella group at my new school!” Blaine says into his phone as soon as Mike picks up.

“I know, I know! I was joking, loser. That’s awesome. How’d the audition thingy go?”

“It was, uh, good.”

“You were terrified,” Mike translates, “but somehow you pulled out a fantastic performance anyway.”

“...pretty much.” Blaine fidgets with the trim on the bottom of his blazer. “How was your day?”

Mike shrugs even though Blaine can’t see him through the phone. “Same old, same old. You know.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says. “Yeah, I know.”

\---

 _December 23, 2008_

Mike and Blaine have been using their respective winter breaks to spend as much time with each other as possible, since Mike being on the football team and Blaine being in the Warblers has taken up a lot of their potential hang out time when school is on. They both sleep in the same house almost every night, not really caring whether it’s Blaine’s or Mike’s--tonight, it’s Mike’s house.

Mike glances over at Blaine, studying his features. He’s half concentrating on the game, half nearly falling asleep. _I suppose he’s sort of cute,_ Mike muses to himself. _In a guy sort of way. With a distinct lack of boobs._

When Mike notices that Blaine’s character on Mario Kart is driving straight into a wall and Blaine isn’t making any attempt to stop it, he frowns. “How long have you been doing that for?” he asks, hitting the pause button.

Blaine jumps. “What?”

Mike snorts and powers down the gaming system. “I guess it’s bedtime, then.”

“I guess--” Blaine yawns “--so.”

Blaine gets up off the end of Mike’s bed and crawls into his sleeping bag on the far side of the room. Mike follows, crawling into the sleeping bag closer to his bed. They’re set up on foamies, so the floor isn’t that uncomfortable.

Mike lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, listening to the sound of Blaine’s breathing. It doesn’t take long for it to even out and Mike assumes Blaine must have fallen asleep quickly.

He sighs to himself.

“What are you sighing about?”

Mike nearly jumps out his skin. “I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

“Not quite,” Blaine mumbles. “What’s up?”

Mike bites the inside of his lip. “How did you know you were gay?” he asks and then he pretty much holds his breath as he waits for the answer.

Blaine, who had been nodding off in front of Mario for the past hour at least, is suddenly jolted wide awake. He rolls over to look at the ceiling and considers the question. “I guess... I just didn’t have the same attraction as everyone else to girls. I could appreciate their good looks, but not the way everyone else did. And then I realized that I was thinking about guys the way everyone else seemed to think of girls and from there... yeah. I’m gay. Why?”

Mike swallows. “Do you remember when I went on that date?”

“To the winter dance?” Blaine asks.

“Yeah, to the dance. It was fun and everything, but Matt was telling me about how much fun it was and how hot his date was and I didn’t really get any of that.”

“What do you mean?”

Mike turns and props himself up on his side, his hand supporting his chin, so that he’s facing Blaine. “I mean, like, she kissed me, and it was okay, but I was mostly like... whatever. And I feel like I should have cared more.”

“Huh,” Blaine says, turning his head to look at Mike. He sits up. “Maybe you’re just not that into her.”

“I’m not,” Mike agrees, nodding.

“So...”

“So...”

“Any sudden attractions to boys?” Blaine asks.

Mike is quiet. “I don’t know,” he says finally.

Blaine frowns. He shifts on the foamie, trying to find a more comfortable spot, and ends up moving a bit closer to Mike. “Do you want to try kissing a guy instead?” he asks.

Mike blinks. “What? Where would I find a guy to kiss?”

Blaine isn’t sure whether he should take that offensively or not. He decides not to. “I’m right here, Michael,” he teases.

“Oh.” Mike pauses. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

So Blaine leans over the empty space between them and presses his lips against Mike’s. It’s mostly just awkward, because he can’t get over the fact that it’s _Mike_ whose lips are sort of sliding against his the tiniest bit.

Mike pulls away. “Was it just me or--”

“That was awkward,” Blaine agrees quickly. “You’re my best friend, I can’t imagine dating you.”

“I don’t know if that cleared anything up, then,” Mike says.

Blaine shrugs.

“I did like kissing her more...” Mike muses, almost to himself.

“Why don’t you just go on another date with her or something?” Blaine suggests. He settles back down into his pillow. “I’m going to sleep. I’m wiped.”

“Good idea, man. Night.” Mike fluffs his pillow and lies back down. “Thanks, Blaine.”

“Anytime,” Blaine mumbles.

\---

 _July 19, 2009_

“Blaine, could you pass me that thing?” Blaine’s father asks from under the 1959 Chevrolet car in their driveway.

“What thing?” Blaine asks patiently from his place crouched next to the toolkit.

“The wrench,” his father says.

“Which one?”

His father is quiet for a moment, then says, “I’m not sure, just hand me one and I’ll try it out.”

Blaine sighs, picks out a medium sized wrench, and places it in his father’s waiting outstretched hand.

It isn’t the right size, of course, and they go through three different wrenches before they get the right one. It could have easily been more, Blaine muses to himself as he takes a drink from his water bottle and squints up at the midday sun.

“Are we going in for lunch anytime soon?” he asks idly as he screws the cap back on his bottle.

“When your mother calls us,” his father says, sliding out from underneath the car. “Do you want a turn under there?” He asks the question in such a way that Blaine just _knows_ that if he says no his father is going to look at him with that disapproving expression and Blaine will feel like a bit of himself has just died, so he nods.

His father shifts out of the way, and Blaine moves to take his place under the car. He can see where his father has been doing something, but it looks fine to Blaine, so he has no idea why his father wanted him to look at it. He stays for a minute, though, just because the shade under the car is kind of nice compared to the sun beating down on him. Not really, but a little.

“Looks good,” he says after his minute is up, and he slides back out. “We could just go check on lunch before we start on another area.”

“All right.” His father is already standing, and when Blaine stands, he slings an arm over Blaine’s shoulder and they walk to the house together like that. Blaine feels a bit awkward, but he rolls with it--he’s supposed to be embracing the bonding, he supposes.

“Blaine, your face is pink!” his mother exclaims almost immediately after he steps through the door. “You’re not like your father, you know. You do have some of my genes. You need to wear sunscreen!”

Blaine winces and pokes at his cheek. It hurts. “I didn’t realize,” he says, which is only half a lie.

“It’s all right, son,” his father says, clapping him on the shoulder. “It happens to the best of us. I’ll go get you some aloe vera cream for that burn and some sunscreen so you can keep working.”

Blaine smiles at his father. “Thanks, Dad.” He watches his father walk away, feeling, for the first time, like maybe this bonding thing might actually work out.

“So, how’s the car?” his mom asks.

“It’s good!” Blaine says, trying to sound enthusiastic. “We’re getting off to a really good start, I think. What’s for lunch, though?”

His mom smiles. “Mushroom soup and grilled cheese sandwiches,” she answers. “I thought you working men would appreciate that.”

“Trust me, any food would be appreciated right now, Mom,” Blaine says. “It’s _really_ hot out.”

“For you,” Blaine’s father says, handing him two containers. Blaine pops the cap on the one that says aloe vera and starts rubbing the lotion into his face.

“Wash your hands when you’re done with that,” his mother admonishes.

“I know,” he shoots back.

“Play nice now,” his father referees teasingly.

Blaine finishes with the aloe and sets the sunscreen aside to put on after he’s done eating. He washes his hands in the kitchen sink and sits down at the kitchen table to eat.

“Blaine said you were getting off to a good start with the car,” his mother says.

His father nods. “Yeah, I think we are. I think we’ll really get something out of this.”

“Yeah, a classic car that runs like a dream if we’re lucky,” Blaine says cheerfully, his mouth still half full of grilled cheese.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” his mother says.

“Yes, exactly what I meant,” his father confirms, his eyes not meeting Blaine’s.

Blaine feels, not for the first time, like he’ll never properly connect with his father. It was hard enough for Blaine to connect with his father when he felt like he’d never live up to his father’s expectations--it’s even harder to connect to his father now that he knows that there’s no way that he can be the person his father wanted him to be.

\---

 _September 3, 2009_

It’s Mike’s first day back at McKinley for tenth grade and it feels like the past two months didn’t even happen. Everything is exactly the same as it was back in June--the football team is all gathered in the parking lot before school, the other kids are rushing past in order to avoid them, a couple Cheerios are hanging out over by the school doors giggling to each other.

Mike is just about to head over to join the football team when Puck breaks ranks to grab hold of a kid’s jacket sleeve and drag him toward the team. The jocks all jeer, and Mike recognizes the victim as Kurt Hummel.

Mike stays standing on the edge of the parking lot where his mother dropped him off. He’s pretty sure something is about to go down, but he isn’t sure he wants to be involved.

He watches as Puck drags Kurt over to the dumpster. Mike frowns as Kurt tries to fight back against Puck’s brute force and eventually goes limp, shooting what Mike is sure is a scathing insult into Puck’s face. Puck just laughs and grabs Hummel under the arms, nodding to Azimio to grab his feet, and they toss him into the dumpster.

Mike looks down at the ground. He knows that the only reason they chose Kurt out of all the people that were walking by is because he looks and acts _gay_. It was the same with Blaine in middle school, and Mike is pretty sure that if Blaine wasn’t attending Dalton, it would have been him in the dumpster right now.

He feels like shit. He may not have gone over to the team because he knew they were about to do something he didn’t want anything to do with, but he could have stopped it--or at least tried.

\---

 _October 1, 2009_

 _6:06 PM Mike Chang_  
You will not believe this.

 _6:07 PM Blaine Anderson_  
You’ve injured yourself at practice. Trust me, Chang, I believe it.

 _6:10 PM Mike Chang_  
No, I haven’t injured myself, you idiot. Kurt Hummel is on the football team.

 _6:13 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Kurt Hummel as in the one you’ve told me about getting bullied for being gay?

 _6:15 PM Mike Chang_  
He says he’s not gay, but yes. He “auditioned” today. He’s a FANTASTIC kicker. And dancer.

 _6:16 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Dancer?

\---

 _October 11, 2009_

“Do you think I should join Glee club?” Mike asks, tossing a football toward the ceiling and catching it again.

Blaine shrugs, concentrating on the TV screen, where he’s attempting to kill things by pushing buttons way harder than necessary. “I don’t know,” he says. “It was a hella good game on Friday, though. I thought you guys were never going to win a game.”

“Well, we did, thanks to Hummel,” Mike mumbles. “The dancing was really fun. I wouldn’t mind doing that more. And the Glee club really needs members, apparently. Even if said members can’t sing. Matt said he might join if I did, too... and there’s that really pretty girl, even though I think she might be taken already, which is just my luck...”

“Didn’t you take dance classes when you were little?” Blaine asks, jerking to the side in an attempt to avoid being killed on the video game. His thumb on the joystick mimicking the movement saves his character.

“For a few months in first grade, but the other kids made fun of me and I quit,” Mike says, tossing the football up and catching it again. “I haven’t properly danced anywhere but my room since.”

“Well, you should get out there,” Blaine says. “Look at me. I never sang to anyone but my mirror, and now I’m a Warbler. Go be a... what are they called?”

“The New Directions,” Mike replies.

“The what now?” Blaine asks, hitting pause on his game and turning around to look at Mike.

“The New... _Die_ -rections,” Mike enunciates.

“Oh,” Blaine says. “Well, go be a Nude Erection, then.”

Mike hits him with a pillow.

\---

 _November 20, 2009_

“What are you doing?” Quinn asks, leaning over his shoulder in the middle of gym class.

Mike snaps shut his DS, shoving it in the pocket of his letterman jacket. “Nothing.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. He feels doom settling down on him. _Not the Fabray eyebrow_ , he thinks desperately. “Really,” she says dryly. “Because it looked to me like you were playing Pokemon.”

His eyes widen. “And how would _you_ know what that looks like?” he counters defensively.

Quinn smirks and reaches into her bag, taking something rectangular out just far enough for Mike to be sure of what he’s seeing--Quinn Fabray has a Nintendo DS in her bag.

“You’re kidding,” he breathes.

“No,” she says. “I’m not.”

They end up spending all of lunch hour hunched in the back of the cafeteria looking suspicious to the rest of the student body and doing nothing to dispel any rumours by acting completely flustered anytime anyone tries to talk to them.

\---

 _December 12, 2009_

 _1:59 PM Mike Chang_  
You’ve been replaced. Quinn Fabray is my new best friend. Oh my God.

 _2:00 PM Blaine Anderson_  
The pregnant cheerleader?

 _2:02 PM Mike Chang_  
Pregnant ex-cheerleader with kick ass Pokemon collection that she currently lugs around in a duffle bag. I am going to steal it, Blaine. I am going to.

“No, you’re not,” Quinn says, reading Mike’s phone screen over his shoulder.

“No, I’m not,” Mike agrees. “But I want to.”

Quinn cracks a smile. “It took me a long time to build up this collection,” she says. “I’m not going to give it up easily.”

“I can tell,” Mike says. “You didn’t leave it at home. That kind of says a lot.”

As if on cue, Puck stops in the doorway of the guest bedroom and leans against the door frame. “Hey, Chang, didn’t know you were coming over.”

Mike shrugs. Quinn stands up from her place on the bed. “He’s here hanging out with me,” she says.

“Ah,” Puck says. “Is he into the same Pokemon stuff you’re always playing? Or are you like a mini book club? You do know Super Mario Brothers is better, right?”

Quinn glares at him. “Stop being a jerk.”

“I was just asking,” Puck says, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll, like, go get you a sandwich.” He disappears from the doorway.

Quinn collapses on the bed again. “I don’t even _want_ a sandwich,” she complains. “I just want _bacon_ , and his mother won’t let me eat any.”

Mike looks at Quinn thoughtfully, then shakes his head. “So how long have you been collecting all this stuff?” he asks, gesturing to the bag.

Quinn fidgets with the lacy hem of her baby doll maternity shirt. “Since I was little,” she answers. “I’ve always been a geek, really. I just sort of hid that part of myself when I discovered I was athletic and became a Cheerio and got popular. Not much point, now, but still.”

“Huh,” Mike says. He kneels on the floor and picks through the games, impressed by the sheer vastness of the collection. “Have you played _all_ of these?”

“And won.” Quinn nods, her eyes focused somewhere up on the ceiling. “Hey, Mike?”

“Mmm?” Mike hums, reading the back of a game box.

“Do you remember knowing a Lucy when you were little?”

Mike puts the game back and sits next to Quinn on the bed. He screws up his forehead in thought. “Yeah,” he replies. “There was this girl that everyone made fun of. They called her Lucy Caboosey.”

Quinn closes her eyes, then turns to Mike and opens them. “You didn’t make fun of her,” she says quietly.

Mike frowns. “No, I don’t think I did. How would you know that?”

“Do you remember Lucy’s last name?”

Mike shakes his head.

“It was Fabray,” Quinn says. “I’m Lucy. That’s how I know. You and your friend, Blaine, you let me play Pokemon with you on a class field trip once.”

Mike blinks, in shock. “That was _you_?”

Quinn nods.

“Whoa. What the hell.”

“Sandwich!” Puck declares, stalking into the room and shoving a plate at Quinn. She takes it and makes a face at it.

“Thanks, Puck.”

“I try. Have fun,” he says, wandering back out.

“I am... not eating this,” Quinn says, inspecting the sandwich. She puts it aside.

“Quinn,” Mike says.

“Hm?”

“How would you like to come live with me?”

 _2:52 PM Mike Chang_  
I like my new best friend so much that she’s moving in with me.

 _2:53 PM Blaine Anderson_  
There isn’t something you’re not telling me, is there? You didn’t secretly impregnate her?

 _2:55 PM Mike Chang_  
No, that was definitely Puckerman. I just think she’ll be happier in a house where she can eat all the bacon and play all the Pokemon she wants. Thankfully, my parents agree.

 _2:56 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I’m coming over to meet my replacement.

\---

 _August 19, 2010_

Mike paces in front of his door. He checks his phone screen again just to have something to do. It looks the same as it did five seconds ago. He wonders how much he’d have to pace before the tile by the door started to wear away.

His phone beeps.

 _6:22 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I can see you pacing from here. Calm down.

Mike frowns at his phone.

 _6:23 PM Mike Chang_  
Are you hiding behind the hedge in the front yard? Are you spying on me?

 _6:23 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I’m keeping an eye on my best friend to make sure he doesn’t die before his first date with the girl of his dreams.

Mike stops in his tracks and has to grope around behind him to find the closest chair to sit down in.

 _6:25 PM Mike Chang_  
Oh God.

 _6:26 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Courage, my man. Courage.

 _6:27 PM Blaine Anderson_  
At least you already know she likes you--this is just to seal the deal, right? Just be yourself.

 _6:28 PM Mike Chang_  
What if she only thinks she likes me? What if it’s all a lie?

 _6:28 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Shut up.

 _6:30 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I’d beat her up for being stupid.

Mike smiles at his phone and nearly falls out of his chair when there’s a knock at his door. He fumbles his phone and curses when it hits the floor. He leaves it there in his haste to open the door.

“Hi,” he says, a bit out of breath, even though he’d been sitting only five feet from the door.

“Hey,” Tina says, smiling at him. She’s wearing one of those cute black dresses with boots and gloves and other accessories and she looks amazing.

“Hi,” Mike repeats.

Tina’s smile widens. “Hey,” she says again. “Are you all ready to go?”

“I--yeah. Just let me grab my phone. I dropped it.” He turns around, grabs his phone from the floor just behind his feet, and then straightens up again. “Okay. Let’s go.”

He follows her out and down the walkway to where her car is parked on the curb in front of his house. He thinks he spots Blaine’s front door closing, but he resists the urge to turn his head completely to look.

“So, uh, where are we going?” he asks once they’re both sitting in her car, buckled up, and Tina is putting the car into gear.

“Dinner and a movie, remember?” Tina teases. “You can put whatever music from my iPod on.”

“I meant where for dinner,” Mike says, picking up Tina’s iPod.

Tina’s knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “You don’t have any ideas?”

Mike finds the Spice Girls on Tina’s iPod and puts on Stop. “Uh, no. No ideas. Breadstix?”

“Breadstix is so cliche, though,” Tina says, wrinkling her nose.

Mike shifts in his seat. “That’s true.”

Tina purses her lips and keeps driving. Mike wants to disappear. The Spice Girls keep singing. He wishes he’d picked something less peppy. It’s probably going to be stuck in his head for the rest of the night.

 _6:47 PM Mike Chang_  
I am going to die. I’ve already screwed things up.

 _6:48 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Breathe. It’ll all work out.

Tina pulls into the parking lot of a grocery store. Mike has to look twice because he’s not quite sure why she’s going to a grocery store of all places. She kills the engine and turns to him.

“How do you feel about picnics?”

He finds out why a grocery store. They peruse the aisles together, Tina picking out seemingly random food from the shelves and occasionally asking him whether he prefers some sort of something to something else. He just points to one when she does this--he doesn’t really know because he’s mostly just paying attention to her and not the food.

They pay for the food--Mike insists on throwing some of his cash in on it--and go back to the car.

“Where are we going to eat all this?” he asks, turning down the wails of Wannabe.

“I know a place,” Tina says mysteriously. She turns Wannabe right back up as she pulls out onto the road and starts singing along. Mike watches her. He likes that she can be both a mystery and the same old Tina he’s always known.

The place Tina knows is a park not too far away (at least, the Spice Girls playlist didn’t end in the time it took to get there, though Mike had been starting to think it might). There are picnic tables, and they find one away from the road, in a clump of trees.

“This is really cool,” Mike tells Tina.

She grins. “Thanks. Cookie?”

Mike takes the chocolate chip cookie from her. “Dessert first?” he says through a mouthful of it.

“It’s all those kids at camp,” she says flippantly. “They kept begging for it. I thought we should see if it was really so great.”

“Mmmm, chocolate,” is Mike’s only response to that.

“Are you all caught up on So You Think You Can Dance?” Tina asks, cracking open the bottle of Sprite she’d bought.

Mike nods and starts assembling himself a ham sandwich.

“What did you think of the winner?”

That starts Mike right off. He has a lot of feelings about the show and who America likes to vote as their favourite. Tina listens carefully the entire time--it isn’t like when Mike talks to Blaine or to Matt or to Quinn, because none of them really get it. Tina does, though. She knows enough to formulate her own opinion and even once disagrees with him about the talent of one of the girls in the top six, which he’s never had happen before.

He thinks he shouldn’t really, but he likes it.

The discussion moves to different topics as they eat their picnic. At one point Mike gets on the topic of superheroes (Tina had asked something about what he and Quinn do together all the time) and rambles on while Tina eats an entire bag of chips without saying anything once. When Mike realizes what he did he nearly texts Blaine that everything is ruined and she thinks he’s a total dork, but then Tina asks him what brand his sneakers are, and he has to take one off in order to show her because he doesn’t know, and then she starts talking about shopping and some sort of thing that Kurt and Mercedes dragged her to. He listens. He’s relieved that she wasn’t scared off by the superheroes.

At least, she’s hiding it well if she was.

 _8:13 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Are you still alive?

 _8:14 PM Mike Chang_  
And kicking. :)

“Who are you texting?”

“Blaine. He’s my next door neighbour--we’ve been best friends since we were little.”

“What are you texting about?” Tina makes to grab Mike’s phone, but he jerks it out of her reach.

“He wanted to know if I was still alive.”

“Why wouldn’t you be? Doesn’t he trust you to take care of yourself?”

Mike tries desperately to come up with a reason that doesn’t sound stupid. “I was nervous about the date and, uh, yeah, I think he thought I might keel over,” he blurts out.

Tina stares at him for a moment, then starts laughing. Mike chuckles awkwardly. “You were nervous?” she asks seriously.

Mike nods.

“Why? It’s not like you haven’t spent most of the summer with me already. We’ve even already kissed.”

Mike swallows. “A date’s different, though,” he rasps out. His throat feels like it might close up and he won’t be able to breathe at all. He’s already having trouble. He’s suddenly even more hyper aware of how close Tina’s leg is to his on the picnic table’s bench.

Tina looks thoughtful. “I guess so.”

“You weren’t nervous at all?” Mike asks.

Tina shrugs. “I was. But it’s pretty easy to just relax and hang out with you. You’re fun.”

“I’m fun?” Mike repeats.

She smiles at him. “Yeah. Fun. You went on a picnic with me. That’s pretty fun.”

“Yeah. I’m, uh, definitely having fun,” Mike mumbles.

Tina shifts closer on the bench and starts squishing up empty packages and stuffing them into her empty chip bag. Mike freezes--her entire thigh is pressed up against his now. She can’t be unaware of that, can she?

He chances a look over at her on the guise of handing over a wrapper. Her face is unreadable, but he thinks maybe there’s a--her toes are nudging into his heel now, there’s no way that’s not intentional. And there’s that adorable smirk he thought he saw hiding before.

Tina scrunches closed the top of the bag with her right hand and looks at Mike. He looks back at her.

She rolls her eyes and makes to turn away again.

He kisses her before she can.

It’s exactly as perfect as he remembers it being in front of all those kids at camp. It’s probably better, really, because he really quite prefers the silence of nature in the background to a bunch of shutter clicking camera phones.

He lets his hand tangle into her hair at her back and deepens the kiss. He’s vaguely aware of her letting go of the chip bag and grabbing onto his arm instead, but he mostly can’t focus on anything but Tina’s lips and Tina’s mouth and holy fuck he’s kissing Tina Cohen-Chang, what did he do to deserve this.

He wonders if he’ll feel like this every single time he gets to kiss her.

Mike can feel Tina smile against his mouth just before she pulls away and stands up all in one smooth motion.

“I think I feel like ice cream,” she says, smiling hugely at him.

“Okay,” he agrees, smiling helplessly back.

They clean up their picnic stuff and take it all back to the car, dumping it, garbage and all, unceremoniously into Tina’s backseat. She says she’ll clean it up later, and Mike figures she probably actually will.

She drives them downtown and parks in front of a Dairy Queen. He smiles at that, because Dairy Queen is so commercial compared to a picnic in the park.

They go in and order their Blizzards--mint chocolate chip for Mike and strawberry cheesecake for Tina--and when they get them, they go back outside to sit at one of the picnic tables on the sidewalk. Tina takes out her phone to check the time. “Did you still want to watch that movie? There’s probably an eight forty-five or nine o’clock showing of something that we can get to,” she says.

Mike shrugs. “Do you want to?” he asks through a mouthful of ice cream.

Tina seems to consider this for a minute before she nods. “We should. That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Mike agrees, though he doesn’t think Tina would have a problem changing plans, seeing as when he’d said “dinner” he hadn’t meant “picnic”.

The movie theatre isn’t far away, so they finish their ice cream sitting at the picnic table. Tina takes their empty cups over to the garbage and throws them out and then starts walking down the sidewalk. Mike stands by the table and blinks after her in confusion.

She stops and turns to look at him. “Are you coming?”

“What?” he asks stupidly.

“The theatre’s just around the block. I thought we may as well just walk over there,” Tina explains. Mike runs to catch up with her.

Once they get to the theatre, Mike realizes he has pretty much no desire to see any of the movies that are on. There’s a super hero movie that might be hilariously bad, though, and he suggests it to Tina. She shakes her head.

“We’re going to this one,” she says, gesturing to the movie poster.

Mike looks at it. It’s some fluffy summer romantic comedy that he would never have imagined Tina liking in a million years. “Really?” he asks doubtfully.

“Really,” Tina confirms.

“You want to watch that?”

“I do,” she says. “It looks... really good.”

Mike narrows his eyes, but doesn’t argue. Tina insists on paying for her own ticket, so Mike insists on buying them both popcorn.

When Tina walks straight into the theatre and sits down in the back row, Mike raises an eyebrow at her, but doesn’t say anything as he sits down next to her. She grins at him and takes a few pieces of popcorn out of the bag he’s holding. He smiles back.

It only takes five minutes for Mike to be one hundred percent sure that the movie is one hundred percent terrible, and not even in a funny way. He glances at Tina out of the corner of his eye and sees her practically staring straight at him rather than the screen.

Then he cottons on. He’s pretty sure she picked this movie because she doesn’t want to watch it. “You don’t want to watch this, do you?” he whispers, though, just to check.

“No,” she whispers back, and then her arms are around his neck and her lips are on his and his hands are slipping around to her back, and _nope_ , Mike is still not used to the whole kissing Tina thing.

It’s pretty great, though. He could easily do this for the entire length of the movie.

 _11:25 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Looks like it went well!

 _11:26 PM Mike Chang_  
Were you watching us make out on my front steps?

 _11:28 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I went back to my room after I realized you weren’t going to stop any time soon.

 _11:30 PM Blaine Anderson_  
At least I won’t be beating anyone up.

 _11:31 PM Mike Chang_  
It’s the thought that counts.

\---

 _October 5, 2010_

 _5:02 PM Mike Chang_  
Tina and I need Asian Couples Therapy.

 _5:03 PM Blaine Anderson_  
As if.

 _5:03 PM Mike Chang_  
She wants me to sing a duet with her.

 _5:04 PM Blaine Anderson_  
So sing a duet with her.

 _5:04 PM Mike Chang_  
I can’t sing!

 _5:05 PM Mike Chang_  
And she doesn’t want to go out for dim sum with my mom anymore!

 _5:07 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I am coming over to help solve all your problems.

 _5:08 PM Mike Chang_  
God, I love you.

\---

 _November 4, 2010_

 _1:32 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Have you been sending spies to Dalton?

 _3:06 PM Mike Chang_  
Tina pictures my football coach when we make out!

 _3:08 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I don’t even know what to say to that.

\---

 _November 8, 2010_

 _2:40 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Courage.

When Blaine’s phone rings while he’s watching TV on Monday night and he checks the display to see that it’s Kurt calling him, he’s quick to hit pause on his DVR and answer.

“Hi, Kurt!”

“Blaine. I’m sorry to be calling so late and for this, but I didn’t know who else I could talk to and--”

“Whoa, Kurt, slow down,” Blaine says, straightening up a bit. “Breathe. Are you okay?”

He hears Kurt exhale and then inhale through the line. “I’m okay right now.”

“What’s going on, though? What’s wrong?” Blaine asks, clutching his phone a bit too tight.

“Do you remember the Neanderthal I told you about?” Kurt asks, his voice sounding a bit shaky still.

“Yes.”

Kurt’s voice drops to almost a whisper. “He kissed me.”

“ _What_?”

“He shoved me into the lockers like he does when he sees me in the hallway and he’s close enough, and I fell, and then I just, I don’t know, went _crazy_ with adrenaline and followed him into the locker room and started yelling at him. I told him to go ahead and hit me because it wouldn’t change who I am and I thought he was going to, but instead he kissed me. Karofsky kissed me, and it was horrible.”

Blaine’s death grip on his phone is starting to hurt his knuckles, but he doesn’t let go. “Oh, Kurt,” he says softly. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Kurt says, his tone panicked. “That’s why I called you. I don’t know what to do. I’ve just been trying to act normal, you know, making dinner for my dad, doing my homework, but I just keep replaying it in my head and it just gets worse and I couldn’t handle it anymore, but I didn’t want to tell my dad. He doesn’t need anymore stress, what with his heart problems.”

Blaine bites his lip. “Are you sure? I--”

“I’m sure,” Kurt interrupts. “He can’t know about this. In fact, no one can know. I don’t think Karofsky would appreciate that.”

“You’re worrying about _him_?” Blaine asks.

“I don’t believe in outing,” Kurt says calmly.

“Right,” Blaine mutters. His mind goes into overdrive, trying to work out a solution. He feels he owes it to Kurt--first he sent him that text, which he thinks is the reason Kurt ran after Karofsky at all, and now Kurt has turned to _him_ of all people. “Well, I’ll come to McKinley tomorrow and we can talk to Karofsky together.”

“ _Talk_ to him?”

“Yeah. Offer to help him, maybe? He’s got to be feeling really confused, right? It wasn’t right of him at all to do what he did to you, but I can kind of get it.”

Kurt is quiet for a moment. “You’re right. How are you going to get to McKinley when Karofsky will be there? Dalton’s nearly two hours away.”

“I’ll call in sick so I can stay home and just come over there at lunch. I have homework I’ve been avoiding, anyway,” Blaine says, casting his eyes toward the books on his desk.

“Well, okay. Thank you so much, Blaine.”

“It’s not a problem, I promise.”

Blaine ends the call feeling sick to his stomach.

\---

 _November 9, 2010_

“Thank you again for coming,” Kurt stresses, clinging to the strap of his messenger bag.

“Don’t worry about it,” Blaine says, tugging on the bottom of his blazer, which he’d worn for lack of anything else clean in his house (he _really_ needed to clean his street clothes). “I’ve got your back.”

“There he is,” Kurt says. Blaine looks up the steps to see a broad guy in a letterman jacket hurrying down the steps.

Blaine takes a deep breath as they approach Karofsky. “Excuse me,” he says, trying to sound nice, yet still confrontational.

Karofsky stops short and looks from Kurt to Blaine. “Hello, lady boys. This your boyfriend, Kurt?”

“We’d like to talk to you about something.”

“I’ve got to go to class,” Karofsky says, shoving his way past and pushing Kurt into the side of the steps hard.

“No, you don’t,” Kurt mutters.

“Kurt told me what you did,” Blaine bursts out. He can’t believe that this is the guy Kurt’s had to deal with all this time and no one’s even done anything about it.

Karofsky stops and turns around. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Kurt raises an eyebrow. “You know. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Blaine sighs and steps down a few steps. “It seems like you might be a little confused, and that’s totally normal. This is a hard thing to come to terms with, and you should just know that you’re not alone.”

Karofsky has already started to walk away again, but at Blaine’s words he turns around and starts heading for Blaine.

 _Shit. I knew this was going to end badly. Standing up never works._

But Kurt steps in front of him. “You have to _stop this_ ,” he says loudly, pushing Karofsky away from Blaine. “We’re just trying to _help_ you.”

“I don’t want your help,” Karofsky says, glaring past Kurt at Blaine.

“It doesn’t matter if you want it, David, the fact of the matter is that you _need_ it,” Kurt hisses in Karofsky’s face. “You _assaulted_ me. Now, Blaine has helped me to understand a bit of where you might be coming from, so you should be thankful for that. You should also be thankful that I have chosen to keep this to myself, but by God, David Karofsky, if I don’t see you in Ms. Pillsbury’s office after school, I will... do something drastic.”

Karofsky swallows. “You want me to talk to the guidance counselor?” he asks. “The crazy chick?”

“I think it would be best if you talked to a professional,” Kurt says. “Ms. Pillsbury is the best we’ve got.”

Karofsky is shaking his head. “No way. No.”

“What if we came with you?” Blaine suggests. Kurt shoots him a dirty look, but Blaine ignores it. “For moral support.”

“I don’t want your moral support,” Karofsky sneers.

“Maybe not mine,” Blaine agrees. “But Kurt’s?”

Karofsky looks nervously between Kurt’s and Blaine’s faces. He takes a step back again, starting to shake his head.

“Look, David, Kurt’s a good guy. I haven’t know him for that long, but he doesn’t want to tell anyone and he’s a good person for that,” Blaine says, his tone taking a desperate edge. “But if you keep harassing him, he’s either going to be forced into speaking out against you or transferring out of McKinley, and his family doesn’t have the money to send him somewhere like Dalton.” He gestures to his own uniform.

Karofsky’s eyes widen as he takes in Blaine’s serious face, then Kurt standing just as serious next to him. He gives a tiny nod, and Kurt lets out a sigh. “Fine. I’ll be there. You better be, too.”

Karofsky turns on his heel and hurries away down the steps. Blaine and Kurt watch him go.

“Well. That went way better than I expected,” Blaine says. “Though I don’t think he’ll be coming out any time soon. You were brilliant.”

“Thanks for backing me up.”

“You hardly needed it. I know what you do need, though. Lunch is on me.”

“You don’t--”

“Shh, Kurt. I know. But it’s my treat.”

Kurt smiles faintly.

\---

 _November 30, 2010_

“Blaine?”

“Uh, Brittany, right? What are you doing here?”

“You looked sad.”

“Why were you near here to see me looking sad?” Blaine clarifies.

“Oh, I’ve been over at Mike’s,” she explains. “We’re practicing for sectionals. We get to do a whole bunch of really complicated dance stuff that we don’t usually do because not everyone in glee is good at dancing.”

“Ah,” Blaine hums.

“I bet you’re good at dancing!” Brittany exclaims. She hops up from her spot sitting next to Blaine on the steps and grabs his hands, pulling him to his feet.

“What? No!”

“Dance with me, Blaine Warbler!” She spins him around like two kids on a playground, then pulls him in and starts swaying back and forth. “See, look. Dancing.”

“This is like slow dancing, but there’s no music. It’s tacky.”

“It’s romantic,” Brittany shoots back.

Blaine lets them sway a few more times, circling so that he’s facing his house and could maybe see in the window if it was just a bit darker outside and the lights were on in the kitchen, before he pulls his hands out of Brittany’s grip.

“Were you heading somewhere?” he asks.

With anyone else, that might be rude, but Brittany just takes it in stride and shrugs. “I was going to walk home and I saw you sitting out here.”

Blaine nods, letting out a soft sigh. “I’ll give you a ride home. It’s going to be dark before you make it there.”

“I can create my own light, you know. My hair lights up,” Brittany says, matter of fact, but she follows him around front to where his car is parked anyway.

\---

 _February 4, 2011_

“I’m going to do something for Jeremiah for Valentine’s Day,” Blaine announces, apropos of nothing.

Mike looks up from his Biology homework. “Who’s Jeremiah?”

Blaine glares at him. “The guy I went out for coffee with last week, remember?”

“Oh, right, the supposedly dreamy one with the fro that works at The Gap. I see. Why are you doing something for him for Valentine’s?”

“Because I like him, of course, and Valentine’s Day is the perfect day to just lay everything out and tell someone how much you care about them. Just like I told Kurt earlier,” Blaine says.

Mike freezes for a moment, then puts down his pen and picks up his phone, fiddling idly with it. “You told Kurt that, you say?”

“Yeah. He was dissing the decorations at the Lima Bean and I told him I thought they were cute.”

“You told Kurt... okay, forget the decorations for a second. What were you planning to do for Gap Guy for Valentine’s Day?”

“His name is _Jeremiah_ , Michael. And I thought I’d maybe serenade him. Get the Warblers to back me up, you know, the whole works. I asked Kurt if he thought it was too much to sing to somebody on Valentine’s Day, and he said not at all so--”

“Hold up,” Mike interrupts. “Too much to sing to _somebody_. You didn’t specify who?”

Blaine frowns. “Well, no, I just said a guy I recently met that I like.”

Mike stares at Blaine. He looks down at his phone, then back at Blaine, and then he starts to shake his head. “Oh, _Blaine_ , you idiot.”

“What?”

“Look at this.” Mike holds out his phone so Blaine can read the screen.

 _5:47 PM Kurt Hummel_  
Has Blaine mentioned having a crush on me to you?

Blaine sucks in a breath. “Oh.”

“Uh huh. I thought he was just asking out of random curiosity, but it seems you actually did something to prompt the question.”

For a moment, he considers the possibility of having a crush on Kurt--of maybe having Kurt as his boyfriend that he could kiss and hold hands and do boyfriend things with. He can’t hold Kurt’s face in his head, though; it just feels wrong. Blaine wants romance, but he doesn’t feel like he could find it with Kurt. He wishes he could, maybe, because that would be _so easy_ , just falling in love with one of his best friends, but he doesn’t.

“Oh _no_ ,” Blaine laments.

“So you _don’t_ have a crush on Kurt?” Mike asks, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t see why not, dude, he’s, y’know, Kurt. Pretty awesome guy. And you hang out with him all the time these days.”

Blaine shakes his head. “We’re friends. Two gay guys can be friends. I like talking to him about all the stuff you don’t get, like Vogue and musicals and things. This is terrible. Have I been leading him on? I don’t want to lead him on.”

Mike bites the inside of his lip. “I see. Well, I guess you should tell him that, then. I’m going to text him back no, just so he doesn’t bug me about it or anything, but I think you need to make sure he knows you just want to be friends.”

“Right, I will. Thanks, Mike. Now, want to ditch that Bio and help me pick out a song to sing to Jeremiah?”

 _7:32 PM Mike Chang_  
No, he hasn’t. Sorry, bro.

 _7:40 PM Kurt Hummel_  
Oh, thank God.

\---

 _February 10, 2011_

“You deserve better than him, anyway,” Kurt says in what he hopes is a reassuring tone. “I mean, he’s working at The Gap and he’s not even out. Except for the hair, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“I guess,” Blaine says, staring forlornly into his coffee cup. “Don’t they have anything here that isn’t covered in stupid little _hearts_?”

Kurt sighs. He wishes he knew what he could say to get Blaine to smile--or at least not look so goddamn heartbroken. He picks up the plastic bag Blaine had dumped on the empty chair at their table. “Are you going to wear these socks?” he wonders aloud, picking them out of the bag and looking at them.

Blaine looks up and snorts. “I’d rather burn them.”

Kurt purses his lips. “We could do that. If it would make you feel better.” He flips the socks in his hand. “It’s not like they’re of particularly high quality...”

“Kurt?”

“Yes, Blaine?”

“When you said I deserve better...” Blaine turns his coffee cup nervously, eyes fixed to the table. “...did you mean I deserved someone like you?”

Kurt stares at Blaine for a moment. “Well, maybe someone like me, though that would be tough to find. I mean, Kurt Hummel is, dare I say it, flawless and would be quite the catch, I expect.”

He had expected Blaine to at least crack a bit of a smile at that, but Blaine remains stone faced. “But did you mean _you_?”

Kurt sighs. “To be frank, no. I love you like a best friend. And Mike texted me saying you’ve never mentioned having a crush on me, so unless you’ve been keeping secrets from him and also harbouring feelings for two guys at the same time...” He looks at Blaine expectantly.

“Yeah, no, right. I love you as one of my best friends, too.”

“Great. Now that that’s straightened out, let’s go burn some socks.”

\---

 _March 5, 2011_

 _6:58 PM Kurt Hummel_  
New Directions party tonight. Do you want to come with me?

 _7:00 PM Blaine Anderson_  
At Rachel’s? Sure, I’m in.

 _7:01 PM Kurt Hummel_  
Finn and I will pick you up at quarter after eight.

 _7:03 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Sounds great!

By ten-thirty or so, Blaine is more than a little drunk. He’s pretty sure he tried to hit on Finn earlier, maybe, and now they’re playing spin the bottle, and his only hope is that he doesn’t have to kiss him, because that would be just _weird_.

Rachel lands on him and squeals. He laughs. “Blaine Warbler, I am gonna rock your world!” she declares before tugging him toward her with his cardigan and crushing their lips together. Kissing Rachel is nice--he feels all warm and tingly and just plain good.

Then she demands they do a duet together. Kurt laughs at that when it’s over with (in all honesty, he’d been laughing for most of the performance itself) and makes a joke about them doing a hobbit dance up on the stage. Blaine sticks his tongue out at him, which only makes Kurt laugh harder and roll his eyes.

“Dude, as much as I love how nice you are these days, be nice elsewhere,” Mike is saying to Puck, who has been clinging to him for the past half hour. “Blaine, here, cuddle with Puck so I can make out with my girlfriend.”

Blaine suddenly finds himself with an armful of muscled mohawked jock. He’s wearing what Blaine thinks are Lauren’s glasses, maybe, and grinning up at Blaine. “Oh, it’s you,” he slurs. “Blaine Anderson.”

Blaine looks around for help, but Mike has made good and is now making out with Tina over by the couch and Kurt seems to have disappeared completely. Everyone else is preoccupied with whatever.

“I thought you and Berry making out was _hot_ ,” Puck says, straightening himself a bit, and slumping so he’s more hugging Blaine than lying in his arms. “And then that hopping and singing thing. Duuuuuuude.”

“Um,” Blaine says, because even drunk (or possibly _because_ he’s drunk) he doesn’t know what to do with this.

“Shhh,” Puck hums, lifting his head from where it was resting on Blaine’s shoulder and putting a finger to Blaine’s lips. He stares at Blaine for a moment. Blaine stares back. Puck gives a little shrug and all of a sudden his finger on Blaine’s lips is replaced with his own lips on Blaine’s.

For a stunned few seconds, Blaine doesn’t respond, but then Puck’s right hand wraps around the back of Blaine’s neck and the other one gathers the fabric of his cardigan at his lower back and Blaine melts into Puck, the rush of the kiss going straight to his head and short circuiting his brain.

If his kiss with Rachel had been warm and tingly and good, kissing Puck is hot and fuzzy and fantastic.

It’s probably why he’s gay, he manages to think hazily when Puck’s lips leave his own in favour of sliding over his jaw and down to his neck, leaving a wet hot trail.

“Holy _shit_.” Kurt’s voice cuts through haze that is Blaine’s brain and he snaps his face in that direction, suddenly remembering where he is. Puck seems unperturbed, still mouthing at a patch of skin by Blaine’s collarbone, though mostly just wetly.

“Shhh,” Mercedes hisses at Kurt. “You’re going to attract Quinn’s and Lauren’s attention and then they’ll start _yelling_.”

Blaine uses his hands, conveniently already placed on Puck’s shoulders, to push Puck gently away. “Um,” he tries to say.

Puck wildly looks anywhere but Blaine and finally latches his gaze onto Finn. “Finn!” he says loudly. “Take me home, dude. I’m ready to go.”

“Already? It’s only just past eleven, man,” Finn says, checking his phone for the time.

“Home. Now,” Puck repeats, striding past Finn and grabbing his arm, dragging him toward the stairs.

“Oh, are you leaving so soon?” Rachel shrieks. “I hope you had fun, Noah! You’ll be coming back, right, Finn?”

“If you’re taking him, can you take me, too?” Quinn asks, appearing on Finn’s other side. “I think I’m about done with this.” She shoots a dirty look at Rachel, which Rachel thankfully doesn’t notice.

“Sure, Quinn,” Finn agrees. “Does anybody else want to leave right now?”

Puck stands halfway up the stairs, looking horrified that Quinn is about to be in the same car as him, but powerless to do anything about it. She walks up the stairs past him and pokes at his face. “You’re still wearing Lauren’s glasses,” she mutters.

Blaine stands exactly where he was standing when Puck kissed him (and he kissed Puck back) and blinks.

Kurt looks at him and crosses his arms, pursing his lips.

Blaine thinks that maybe he should have just stayed home and away from all the crazy New Directions people like he normally does.

Or at least had the sense not to get so drunk.

\---

 _March 6, 2011_

Blaine is driving home from Kurt’s house, after waking up to discover Kurt’s dad looking at him as if he had potentially just defiled his son sometime in the night (which Blaine really has no interest in doing) and a raging headache, when his cell phone rings. The display tells him that it’s Mike calling, so he reluctantly sticks his Bluetooth in his ear and hits the answer call button.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi. Where are you?” Mike asks.

“Driving home from Kurt’s. I’m loaded up on ibuprofen and drinking water. How about you?”

“At home. I puked my guts out this morning already. My mother caught on and has already made me tea.”

“Tea sounds good,” Blaine says.

“No, man,” Mike says, his tone edged with panic. “It has, like, panda hair in it. And she’s making more. I’m expected to drink it all.”

Blaine grimaces. “Tough luck.”

“You’re telling me. The party was sort of worth it, though. So much for Alcohol Awareness Week.”

“Well, hey, what was it you told me Santana said? She was _aware_ of how much fun alcohol was?”

Mike chuckles. “Yeah, Mercedes told Tina about that one.”

There’s an awkward silence in which Blaine wonders idly why Mike called him but doesn’t bother voicing it purely because he knows Mike will get to the point when he gets to it. Blaine isn’t going anywhere (well, not away from the phone, anyway).

“So, Quinn called me this morning,” Mike says finally.

“Oh? How’s she?”

“Hungover, of course,” Mike scoffs. “Not as badly as I am, though, apparently. She’s coming over in a couple hours.”

“Are you guys going to play _video games_?” Blaine asks, his distaste evident.

“Not unless we do it with the volume muted and the brightness turned way down,” Mike says. “But anyway. Tina had something else interesting to tell me...”

“You never said anything about Tina before.”

“Tina’s a given. You know, when I said _cuddle_ with Puck, I didn’t mean you had to ram your tongue down his throat or anything. I just meant that _I_ was going to go do that with Tina.”

“I, uh--he--how did you find out?”

“Mercedes saw and told Tina,” Mike says.

“Oh. Shit. Mer--”

“Don’t worry, Mercedes was telling Tina in total confidence, and Tina won’t be telling anyone else.”

“She told you.”

“I’m a given. Now what the hell are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Blaine mutters.

He can hear Mike’s sigh of frustration through the phone line. “You’re going to go to coffee with people that I will decide upon for you. Tomorrow at four-thirty. No excuses.”

\---

 _March 7, 2011_

 _4:28 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Screw you. Please don’t make me go in there.

 _4:29 PM Mike Chang_  
Harsh, bro. Harsh. Get your ass in.

Blaine squints through the window of the Lima Bean one last time, then sighs and pulls open the door. Kurt spots him immediately. “Blaine! Over here.”

“Ugh, shush,” Mercedes complains, putting a hand over her eyes, which are already covered by sunglasses.

Kurt rolls his eyes. Blaine sits down in the chair Kurt has obviously saved for him. “Is this for me?” he asks, picking up a coffee cup.

“Medium drip,” Kurt confirms.

Blaine takes a sip. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever, coffee’s good. Can we get to the story now?” Tina asks. “The sooner I get to hear all about this and then get away from the florescent lights, the better.”

“Let’s hear it,” Mercedes demands, snapping her fingers in Blaine’s direction. Kurt leans forward in his chair and looks at Blaine.

“Uh...” Blaine says.

They all stare at him.

Blaine’s cell phone rings. He fumbles to get it out of his pocket. He frowns at the caller ID--what the hell is Rachel calling him for?--but answers it anyway. “Hello?”

“You’re such a cutie pie with your blazer and your pants,” Rachel says, sounding totally like it’s still Saturday night. Kurt’s leaning close to him to try and hear the other end of the conversation. “So,” Rachel slurs, “I have a question.”

“Is she drunk?” Kurt stage whispers. Blaine waves him away, listening to Rachel’s query about going to a showing of Love Story that sounds awfully like an invitation on a date. Actually, Blaine’s pretty sure she started with ‘I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date with me.’

“Rachel, as lovely as that sounds, I think I’m going to have to turn you down,” he says. Mercedes and Tina perk up at the mention of her name. “I’m one hundred percent gay, so dates with girls are like... no.”

“But we kissed at the party and--” she counters.

“That was Spin the Bottle and we were drunk,” Blaine says. “I think you’re still drunk.”

“Well, I may--”

“I have to go, Rachel,” Blaine interrupts. “Sorry.” He hangs up before she can say anything else.

“Did Rachel Berry just ask you out on a date?” Tina asks.

Blaine just nods.

“She’s definitely still drunk,” Mercedes says. “She was throwing back the alcohol today.”

“So were you two,” Kurt points out.

“Not really,” Mercedes counters. “I only had the one shot of bloody Mary that Artie gave me.”

“Same,” Tina agrees.

“You guys were drinking at school?” Blaine asks.

“Ignore,” Kurt says. “That’s McKinley for you. Let’s go back to Saturday night when you were _very_ drunk. Sucking face with both Rachel Berry and Noah Puckerman in one night? That, my friend, is what we call rock bottom.”

Blaine winces. “In my defence,” he starts, but he doesn’t get to finish, because the door to the Lima Bean opens and closes (which is normal) and Quinn Fabray pulls a chair over to their table and sits down (which is not).

“Sorry I’m late,” she says coolly. “What did I miss?”

They all stare at her. Kurt is the first to recover. “Uh, Quinn... no offence intended, but what are you doing here?”

“Mike told me we were meeting up,” Quinn answers smoothly. “To talk about what Warbler boy over there got up to with Puckerman on Saturday.”

 _4:49 PM Blaine Anderson_  
You told Quinn?!

 _4:50 PM Mike Chang_  
Her eyebrow is the devil.

“Blaine was just about to give us the details, weren’t you, Blaine?” Kurt is saying.

“I suppose, yeah,” Blaine answers, swallowing. “In my defence--”

“What were you defending?” Quinn asks.

“Kissing Rachel and Puck in the same night. Shhh,” Kurt hushes.

“ _In my defence_ , they both kissed me.”

“So Puck kissed you?” Kurt asks.

“Yes,” Blaine confirms. “He was being cuddly with Mike, so Mike dumped him on me so he could go make out with Tina, and then he was being cuddly with me. He, um, told me he thought me kissing Rachel was really hot, and, uh, I think something about really liking the duet, and then, I dunno, I didn’t know what to say, but he told me to be quiet and then kissed me.”

They all stare at him.

“Could you all stop staring? I know it’s, like, really surprising to you, but I’m getting a bit uncomfortable here.”

“So Puck... who has, in the admittedly relatively distant past, displayed homophobic behaviour toward myself and has been with almost all the girls in the school, including two that are sitting at this table, Noah Puckerman... kissed you. Blaine Anderson. A boy.” Kurt taps a finger on the table top thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Blaine mutters, taking a sip of his coffee, which is now cold. _Delicious_ , he thinks to himself.

“That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Quinn says. Mercedes and Tina nod in agreement. “I would have thought he’d be macking on Lauren if anyone. Of course, she wouldn’t really let him get anywhere near her, so that’s sort of a no go.”

“Maybe he was just extremely sexually frustrated,” Tina suggests.

“I think if that were the case he would have tried to get in on your boy,” Mercedes says dryly. Tina looks momentarily horrified by this, then her expression changes to something like intrigue. Blaine doesn’t want to know.

“Whatever Puck’s motivations, I think Blaine’s best course of action is probably going to be just not doing anything,” Kurt cuts in. “And if Puck approaches him, he can deal with that then.”

“I’m going to talk to him,” Quinn says.

“I don’t know if that would be such a good--”

“I don’t care what you think, Kurt. I’m going to talk to him.”

Kurt holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine, it’s your head, not mine.”

“Great, now that we’ve got that settled, I’m going home,” Tina announces, standing up. “I can hear my bed calling me and the sound is beautiful.”

“You called it, girl,” Mercedes agrees. She stands, and both her and Tina look at Kurt expectantly. He sighs.

“I drove these two, so I’ve got to go as well. You’re all right?” he asks Blaine.

“I’m fine,” Blaine confirms. “I’ll just head home from here.”

“Okay. Call me later,” Kurt says, and the trio exit together.

Quinn looks over at Blaine. “What is it that we don’t know about you and Puck?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Blaine says, taking a large gulp of his cold coffee.

“Bullshit,” Quinn retorts calmly. “There’s got to be something.”

“Trust me, Quinn, there’s nothing. I’ve got to get home.”

Quinn raises an eyebrow, but Blaine resolutely doesn’t meet her gaze as he stands up and tosses his still half full coffee into the trash can. “Bye, Quinn.”

“Bye,” she says flatly, her eyes following him all the way out the door.

\---

 _April 22, 2011_

Mike is just closing his locker and heading out to the parking lot to catch a ride home with Tina, thinking about what he wants his Born This Way T-shirt to say and whether or not Tina will be down for dinner out tonight, when she runs up to him as if summoned by his thoughts, grabs his arm, and starts dragging him in the opposite direction he’d intended to go.

“Whoa, Tina, where are we going?” he asks, letting her pull him down the hall toward where her locker and the cafeteria is.

She shakes her head, and Mike spots a crowd gathered up ahead. He frowns, and as they get closer, he hears a familiar voice yelling over the whispers of the assembled students.

“Maybe I don’t _want_ you to understand!” Puck is yelling as Mike and Tina push their way through the crowd to the front. Lauren and Puck are facing off with each other. Mike spots Kurt on the other side of the clear space, a bit ahead of the crowd, one hand pressed to his mouth.

“Well, I don’t give a shit, Puckerman, because it just doesn’t fly with me that one day you’re calling Hummel your boy and the next you’re the one slamming him into a locker!”

Tina grabs onto Mike’s arm and leans into his ear. “Kurt and Puck were talking about something--I think Kurt wanted Puck’s help with talking Rachel out of that whole nose job thing--and all of a sudden Puck just flipped and shoved Kurt into the lockers. Lauren saw and called him out on it.”

“Whoa,” Mike breathes.

“Yeah.” Tina nods.

“You’ve got to be hiding something,” Lauren decides, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow at Puck.

Puck’s hands are clenched in fists at his side as he stares over at Lauren, breathing hard. “You know what, whatever. I’m done with this.” He lets his shoulders drop and flexes his hands out.

Lauren’s entire demeanour changes and she drops her arms. “Excuse me, what?”

“We’re over, Zizes, all right?” Puck turns on a heel and stalks over to Kurt. “I’m sorry, Kurt. Just stay away from me.” He keeps walking, shoving random onlookers out of his way.

“What,” Tina says, “was that.”

Mike looks over to see that she already has her phone out, no doubt texting Mercedes. “I have no idea,” he replies regardless. “Should we see if Lauren’s okay?”

“Yeah, I will, hold on.” Tina moves to talk to Lauren. Mike hangs back, figuring that they want to have girl talk or whatever. He’s not good with the whole feelings things unless he can suggest that the person play murdering video games or beat something up--hm, maybe he _should_ go talk to Lauren, she might actually go for that.

Before he can move, though, his phone vibrates in his jeans pocket, and he digs it out to find a text from Quinn.

 _3:42 PM Quinn Fabray_  
Puck broke up with Lauren, huh?

 _3:43 PM Mike Chang_  
How did you know?

 _3:44 PM Quinn Fabray_  
Grapevine. Sam witnessed the showdown, Santana heard. You were there too?

 _3:46 PM Mike Chang_  
Yeah, Tina came and dragged me to witness the fight. Apparently Puck was bullying Kurt again.

 _3:47 PM Quinn Fabray_  
Interesting.

 _3:47 PM Mike Chang_  
???

 _3:50 PM Quinn Fabray_  
Doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious to you that the guy who displayed homophobic behaviour in the past would start again only after doing something homosexual himself? Did Blaine know Puck before Kurt started bringing him to things with ND?

 _3:57 PM Mike Chang_  
Fabreeze, you’re a genius.

 _3:58 PM Quinn Fabray_  
I told you not to call me Fabreeze. You can keep calling me a genius, though.

About an hour later Mike is getting ice cream for dinner with Tina because they can, and Noah Puckerman is parking his mother’s beat up sedan on the street in front of Blaine Anderson’s house. He’d been driving aimlessly around Lima since he left school, yelling at other drivers on the road just because he could. It felt good to yell at some fucking idiot for not signalling that he was going to turn and just not have to think.

Of course, Puck could only escape from his own mind for so long. Pretty soon all he could think about was the way Kurt had looked so betrayed when Puck had shoved him into the locker, the way Lauren’s face had fallen when he’d declared that it was over...

He drove mostly on autopilot, not really caring where he was going. It was only when he was less than a few minutes away from Chang’s (and consequently Anderson’s) house that he realized where he’d subconsciously been heading.

Puck had made a conscious decision to keep going, but now that he is actually parked, he has no idea what the point was. He hits his head against the steering wheel and leaves it there. _I hate you, Anderson,_ he thinks. _You’ve ruined my life._

He feels a sudden overwhelming urge to go tell that to Anderson’s face. He opens the car door and gets out, slamming it shut behind him and stalking up the walkway to Anderson’s front door. He knocks loudly, rapping his knuckles three times on the white painted surface, and waits.

It’s only a moment before the door swings open to reveal Anderson himself, which is rather fortunate, Puck reflects, though at the sight of him he seems to have forgotten what he came here for.

“Puck,” Blaine says. “This is certainly a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” _God, his voice is so sexy. And that curl that’s falling in his face--and_ that _is why you’re here, Puckasaurus._

“I fucking hate you,” Puck spits.

Blaine takes a step back, looking up at Puck. “Pardon me?”

“You heard me: I _hate_ you,” Puck repeats. “You thought you could just be all _perfect_ for all of elementary and junior high and lure me in, only to just disappear for a couple years and come back even _more_ perfect than I remember. _Fuck_ you, Anderson, _fuck you_. I don’t want to be _gay_.”

“No one said you were gay, Puck,” Blaine says calmly. “I would wager based on what Mike has told me that--”

“Fuck what Chang has said,” Puck interrupts.

“But--”

“Shut _up_.” Puck puts a finger on Blaine’s lips.

Blaine steps away. “That’s not going to work this time.”

Puck lets his hand fall. He’s struck by a sudden idea--another _need_ to do something, not just based on how much he wants Anderson to stop talking about what sexual orientation he thinks Puck identifies as. “Are you going to invite me in, then?”

Blaine steps aside and gestures for Puck to come in. Puck does so, and Blaine shuts the door behind him. “Now, as I was saying, I think that--”

Puck pushes him into the entrance way wall and kisses him, his fingers entangling in Blaine’s curls. It feels just as good as every kiss Puck’s ever really experienced, only-- _more_ and it’s just _stupid_ how it makes Puck want to cling to Blaine and just never let go and never stop _kissing_ him.

And he can’t even fucking blame it on the alcohol this time. Fucking hell, he should have just not even fucking bothered.

\---

 _April 28, 2011_

“I miss Santana,” Brittany says when Blaine opens his front door around seven in the evening.

He sighs. He will honestly never understand how he came to be one of Brittany’s apparent best friends. “Come in,” he tells her. “Where’d Santana go?”

“She’s dating Sam still,” Brittany says, heading for the stairs to go up to Blaine’s bedroom. “I mean, I think, anyway. They never got in a fight and broke up...”

“Are you still dating Artie?” Blaine asks, following her. At that, Brittany stops at the top of the stairs and turns around to look at Blaine. He looks up at her. “What?”

“He called me stupid,” Brittany says, her lower lip trembling. “So I broke up with him.”

“Oh no,” Blaine says, hurrying up the last few steps to hug Brittany. “I told you he was no good for you.”

“You did?” Brittany asks, her voice muffled by Blaine’s hair.

He frowns behind her back. “Well, no, you started dating him before we were really friends, and you don’t talk about him that often. He seemed okay when I, uh, sorta met him.”

Brittany sniffles out a laugh and pulls out of the hug. They walk into Blaine’s room and Brittany flops down on his bed, crossing her legs. “So what’s this about Santana?” Blaine asks, sitting down on the foot of his bed.

“I made her a lesbian shirt last week,” Brittany says, “but she wouldn’t wear it. She didn’t even come dance with us in the shirt she made for herself. But this week after I broke up with Artie she said she wanted to make me feel better, and she sang this song that made me cry, and then she said she wanted to be with me, so I said that if she came on Fondue for Two and said yes after I asked her to prom, then we could.”

“That all sounds okay,” Blaine says.

“I guess,” Brittany says, playing with a loose string on the bottom of her jeans. “But she just texted me this instead of coming over.” She tugs her phone out of her pocket and hands it to Blaine.

 _6:16 PM Santana Lopez_  
I can’t.

Blaine sucks in a breath. “Oh.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Brittany says, hugging her knees to her chest. It reminds Blaine of all the times he’s sat in that exact spot on his bed and done the exact same thing--but especially of right after he came out to his parents.

“Here’s what you do,” he declares after a minute or two of silence in which he debates just telling Brittany he’s as clueless as she is and that she should just go home. “You go over to Santana’s, and you tell her that you have faith in her and that she has the courage within her to be able to do this. Santana’s kind of a bitch, right? Just tell her that she has to be herself and not give a shit. Tell her what she needs to hear.”

Brittany looks at Blaine in obvious confusion. “But all that is really obvious.”

“You’re telling her what she needs to hear. It doesn’t matter if she already knows.” He hopes.

“Do you really think she’ll listen to me?” Brittany bites her lip.

Blaine reaches out to grab hold of Brittany’s hand and says the first thing he really one hundred percent believes. “If she’ll listen to anyone, Britt, she’ll listen to you.”

\---

 _May 13, 2011_

 _7:21 PM Blaine Anderson_  
How’s New York?

 _7:22 PM Brittany Pierce_  
I wrote a song about a cup. :D

 _7:23 PM Kurt Hummel_  
Just as amazing as I’d dreamed it would be. You would love it.

 _7:23 PM Mike Chang_  
It’s great. Wish you were here, man.

 _8:04 PM Noah Puckerman_  
It would be better if you were in my bed.

\---

 _June 19, 2011_

 _11:31 AM Blaine Anderson_  
Want to come over?

 _11:32 AM Noah Puckerman_  
I’m sleeping.

 _11:33 AM Blaine Anderson_  
I’ve got a bed.

 _11:35 AM Noah Puckerman_  
Is this a booty call? On Sunday morning?

 _11:35 AM Blaine Anderson_  
Maybe.

\---

 _July 4, 2011_

 _5:41 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Want to go to the fireworks with me tonight?

 _5:45 PM Noah Puckerman_  
No, I’ve got plans, but you could swing by after they’re over. My mom’s working and my sister’s over at her friend’s.

 _5:46 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Okay, will do.

\---

 _July 26, 2011_

 _2:03 PM Mike Chang_  
Pokemon with me and Fabreeze? Tina might be coming by with Britt, too.

 _2:04 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I can’t, Puck is over.

 _2:11 PM Mike Chang_  
Seriously? Are you two, like, ever apart?

 _2:12 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Yes, we are!

 _2:13 PM Mike Chang_  
Doesn’t seem like it. Get your ass over here. Bring Puckerman.

 _2:17 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I’m on my way. Puck’s just going to go home.

\---

 _August 19, 2011_

 _8:03 PM Noah Puckerman_  
Come over?

 _8:05 PM Blaine Anderson_  
I’ll be there in a few.

\---

 _September 1, 2011_

When Blaine opens his front door barely five minutes after he’s arrived home from Dalton, he’s kind of expecting it be a certain tall, muscular football player on the other side. Instead he gets a tall, blonde girl in a bright red Cheerios uniform who happily bounces past him and into his house without waiting for an invitation.

“Hi!” Brittany says. “How was your first day? Mine was great. Santana was all moody, but that’s Santana for you, and I feel really great being back on the Cheerios.”

Blaine pushes the door shut behind Brittany. “My day was fine,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

“I haven’t seen you in forever!” Brittany bubbles. “You spent all summer cooped up with Puck, and I figured if I got over here before he did, you would hang out with me.” She smiles at Blaine. “I think you two are really cute together, you know. I tried to tell him that, earlier, but he told me that sex wasn’t dating. San used to say that, but I kind of think it’s not true.”

Blaine blinks. “Wait, what did he say?”

“Sex isn’t dating,” Brittany repeats. “But I think that’s just another way of saying you’re scared.” She squints at Blaine. “Do you need to sit down?”

Blaine feels sick. He swallows and nods, letting Brittany grab his arm and lead him to the living room couch.

“Did I do something wrong?” Brittany wonders aloud, feeling Blaine’s cheek with the back of her hand.

He manages to shake his head. “No, Britt,” he says. “It wasn’t you.”

\---

 _September 11, 2011_

 _7:21 PM Noah Puckerman_  
Okay, are you actually seriously avoiding me? Did I do something?

 _7:33 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Yeah, you did.

 _7:34 PM Noah Puckerman_  
So why don’t you tell me what so I can make it up to you?

 _7:40 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Sex isn’t dating?

 _7:40 PM Noah Puckerman_  
Who said that?

 _7:40 PM Blaine Anderson_  
You. To Brittany.

 _7:44 PM Noah Puckerman_  
You can’t be serious.

 _7:45 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Why can’t I be serious? I kinda thought we were.

\---

 _October 31, 2011_

Blaine is in the middle of watching Halloweentown because it’s on TV (and because it’s his favourite Halloween movie and he loves it, but that’s irrelevant) when the doorbell rings--which is normal, of course, because it’s Halloween and he’s been getting up to hand out candy all night. He hits pause on the DVR and picks up the nearly empty bowl of candy.

He opens the door to find Puck standing on the other side. “Ah,” he says, and he makes to close the door again.

Puck puts an arm out to block the door. “Trick or treat.”

“No,” Blaine retorts. “You don’t even have a costume.”

Puck smirks. Blaine tries very hard not to melt at the sight of it. “I thought you might say that.” He produces a mask from behind his back and slides it over his face.

Blaine squints. “Is that Spiderman? I hate Spiderman.”

“You can’t deny me candy just because you don’t like the superhero I’m dressed up as,” Puck says, his voice a bit muffled.

Blaine sighs, picks a chocolate bar out of the bowl, and holds it out to Puck. “Here. Now you can leave me alone.”

Puck makes as if to take the chocolate and closes his hand around Blaine’s instead. “Anderson...” he starts.

“Let go of me.”

“No. Listen to me. I want to invite you out to Breadstix with me. This Friday. Like a date, yes, since I know that’s what you’re going to ask next.”

Blaine stares at Puck. “You want to go _out_ on a date? With me?”

“Hell yes. You would have known before now if you had just bothered to read my texts or answer my phone calls or your fucking door. I had to resort to coming on a night when I knew you would answer the door without checking. Which, you know, is actually not safe.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Well, maybe if you--” Blaine shakes his head. “What time Friday?”

“I’ll pick you up at eight?”

“I’ll meet you there,” Blaine says decisively.

Puck looks like he wants to argue, but he just nods. “All right. Spidey out.”

Blaine watches him walk down the front steps. He can’t help the small smile that makes its way onto his face anymore than he can help the feeling of apprehension in his stomach.

\---

 _November 4, 2011_

When Blaine drives past the entrance to Breadstix at 7:52, he can clearly see Puck standing there in his grey jacket, face only half lit with the light from the restaurant. Blaine parks his car in the closest spot he can find to the door and walks over, his hands shoved in the pockets of his coat.

“I was afraid you weren’t going to show up,” Puck says.

“Been stood up a lot?” Blaine asks. It comes out in a more biting tone than he’d intended.

“Just once,” Puck says. “And it sucked. But you’re here, so whatever.”

Blaine looks at Puck. Puck looks at the door and worries at his bottom lip.

“You know,” Blaine says carefully, “you don’t have to do this.”

Puck looks back at Blaine and snorts. “Yes, I do. Let’s go.” He pulls open the door and ushers Blaine in.

“Uh, reservation for Puckerman,” Puck says to the host.

He eyes first Puck, clearly familiar with him, then Blaine. “Right this way,” he says, leading them to a booth in the middle of the restaurant. It surprises Blaine--he’d been expecting somewhere in the back.

“Your waitress will be with you shortly,” the host says, putting menus down in front of them.

“It half surprises me that they even give me this anymore,” Puck says, flipping up the cover of his menu and letting it fall closed again. “Like I don’t have it memorized.”

Blaine nods and picks up his own menu. “So what do you suggest?”

Puck blinks over at him. “I, uh...”

The waitress comes up to the table--she’s a blonde, clearly not that many years out of high school. She puts a basket of bread sticks on the table. “What can I get you two to drink?” she asks, snapping her gum.

“Water, please,” Blaine says.

“I’ll have a Coke,” Puck says.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” the waitress says, turning and walking away. Blaine goes back to scanning his menu. Puck picks a bread stick out of the basket and eats it.

“I don’t know what to recommend you get,” he says after he’s swallowed, “because I always just eat all the bread sticks and then I’m not really sure if my actual meal was any good because I didn’t really eat it.”

Blaine puts down his menu and takes a bread stick. “You really think these are that good?” He takes a bite of the bread stick.

“Yeah, man,” Puck says. “Just like... _bread sticks_. I mean, I don’t have a love affair with them like Lopez or anything, but they’re pretty damn good.”

Blaine swallows. “It’s just a bread stick.”

Puck’s jaw practically drops. “ _Just_ a bread stick?”

“Just a bread stick,” Blaine confirms, popping the rest of it into his mouth.

Puck shakes his head. “You’re nuts. It’s, like, a delicacy, I’m sure.”

“Nah.”

 _8:06 PM Mike Chang_  
Are you still alive?

 _8:07 PM Blaine Anderson_  
Bread sticks are a delicacy.

 _8:07 PM Mike Chang_  
Is that code for something?

The waitress comes back with their drinks and a pad of paper, still snapping her gum. She looks at them expectantly.

“I’ll just have the spaghetti,” Blaine says when it’s clear that Puck’s not going to say anything.

“Same as him,” Puck chimes in.

The waitress takes their menus and walks away again. Blaine picks up his water to take a sip and goes to put it down at the same time that Puck is reaching for another bread stick. The bottom of his glass collides with Puck’s arm and it slips out of his hand, water and ice cascading across the table.

“Fuck!” Blaine exclaims, jumping half to his feet and attempting to use his already soaked napkin to mop up the water.

Puck sits frozen, his hand still outstretched. People from other tables look over as Blaine slides out of the booth and waves for the waitress to come over. She does, bringing a rag with her, and starts wiping up the mess.

“My hand just slipped, I’m sorry,” Blaine explains, darting a glance at Puck out of the corner of his eye.

“It’s okay, happens more often than you would think,” the waitress says. “I’ll get you a new water.”

“That would be great, thank you,” Blaine says. She nods and heads off with Blaine’s glass full of ice wiped off the table. Blaine slides back into his seat. “Are you okay?” he asks Puck.

Puck shrugs minutely. Blaine looks around the restaurant. “No one’s looking anymore.”

Puck visibly relaxes at that. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I shouldn’t have put my hand out like that.”

Blaine shrugs. “It was an accident. It happens.” He tilts his head a bit to study Puck. “Are you okay?” he asks again.

“Yeah,” Puck says. “It just startled me, that’s all.”

They stare at each other across the table for a few minutes. The waitress comes back with their food and a new glass of water for Blaine and promptly disappears again without asking if they need anything, which Blaine finds a bit lacking service wise.

Blaine picks up his fork and spins it in his spaghetti. He doesn’t really feel like eating. Puck reaches for a bread stick, and Blaine puts up a hand to stop him.

“You should eat your spaghetti,” he suggests. “Then you’ll be able to tell people whether you think the spaghetti here is good or not.”

Puck nods and looks down at his pasta. He slides his fingers between Blaine’s. “I missed holding your hand,” he says quietly.

Blaine stares at Puck. “What?”

“We spent all summer together, Anderson,” Puck says, his voice taking on a fond tone. “And then you ignored me for two months. Not only do I have, like, the worst case of blue balls that mankind has ever seen, I started thinking about all these _little_ things.”

“Like holding hands?”

Puck nods. “Like holding hands. And your DVD collection and how much I actually love it even though I pretend to hate half the movies in it. And how hipster your stupid clothes are--I even figured out which of your cardigans is my favourite. Fuck, Blaine, if I didn’t lo... like you so much, I would hate you. This is why I used to hate you. You make me have all these weird feelings that I don’t know how to deal with.”

Blaine tightens his grip on Puck’s hand. “Wow,” he says, struck a bit speechless by Puck’s words.

Puck closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Blaine,” he says, opening them again and looking at Blaine seriously. “I’m sorry for making our relationship seem like... not a relationship. It may have just been sex all summer, but it really wasn’t. Brittany just caught me off guard, chirping on about how fucking _cute_ we were, and all I could think was ‘What does she know?’, y’know? So I’m sorry. I’m not ashamed of you or anything, I promise.”

Blaine breathes out a sigh he hadn’t known he’d been holding enough breath in for. “Thank you,” he says. “I think I needed to hear that.” Puck nods. “And I’m sorry, too,” Blaine continues. “I should have listened to you sooner. We were both in the wrong.”

“Well,” Puck says, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that sometimes you have to get things wrong first to get them right later.”

Blaine smiles. “I missed you,” he admits. “But I was so angry at you.”

Puck smirks back at him. “Well, how’s about we fix that case of blue balls I was talking about having? Yours can’t be any better, hm?”

“I’m not really hungry,” Blaine says.

“Me neither.” Puck signals for the waitress. “Just the bill, please and thank you.”

He digs money out of his back pocket and slaps it down on the table without waiting for her to come back. He and Blaine hurry out into the parking lot, and Blaine tugs Puck toward his car.

“Is that going to be enough money?” Blaine asks, already a bit out of breath.

“Probably too much,” Puck says, “but I have a feeling this is going to be worth every cent.”

Blaine pulls him by the front of his jacket into a kiss, standing on his toes to lean into Puck. He fumbles behind him for the door handle and manages to yank it open. He breaks the kiss in order to properly yank Puck into the backseat, grinning.

Puck slams the door closed behind them with his foot. “God, I missed you,” he breathes, and then they’re kissing again, and all Blaine can feel is heat thrumming through his body and wrapping around them as they cling fiercely to each other, Blaine’s nails digging into Puck’s biceps and Puck’s fingers curling around the roots of Blaine’s hair.

\---

 _May 4, 2012_

Blaine hadn’t been expecting anyone over--he’d just been settling in to marathon some Doctor Who in his pajamas in lieu of hanging out with Puck or Kurt or Mike--so he’s a bit confused as to why there’s suddenly a leggy blonde girl rummaging through the pantry in his kitchen.

Probably not as confused as he once would have been, though. He has been friends with her for long enough.

“Popcorn!” Brittany says triumphantly, waving the package in the air. She unwraps it and sticks it in the microwave, pressing the buttons to start it up. “You said you were going to have a marathon of that TV show with the guy who has two hearts, right? You need popcorn to marathon things properly.”

“Oh,” Blaine says stupidly. “Okay.”

The popcorn finishes in the microwave and Brittany empties the bag into a bowl. She strides into the living room and settles herself down on the couch. “Come on, Blaine Warbler,” she says, patting the spot next to her. “Plenty of popcorn for you, too. Is this the season with the redhead?”

Blaine nods and reaches for the remote to press play. He learned long ago not to question anything Brittany does, and it’s not like inviting herself over to watch Doctor Who with him is the weirdest thing she’d ever done in the time he’s known her.

“Santana’s going to college,” Brittany says right at the climax of an episode, when the Doctor has just revealed how he’s going to save everyone. Blaine fumbles for the remote and hits pause. The popcorn is all gone, but the empty bowl had been sitting in his lap and some seeds tip out of it to fall onto the ground..

“What?” he asks.

“San got accepted to college in California and she’s going.” She doesn’t need to say that she wasn’t accepted. Brittany only just managed to scrape by with enough credits to graduate.

Blaine wraps his arms around Brittany and squeezes her. “It’s okay, Britt. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Then why does it feel like the Doctor should be coming to save me?” Brittany sniffles into his shoulder.

Blaine sighs and sits back. “You could move to California with her,” he suggests.

“But I’m not going to school,” Brittany points out. “I can’t.”

“You have talent, though. You can dance and you can sing. What better place to exploit that than California?”

“You mean, like, I could get a job?”

“Well, yeah, Brittany. You’d need a job here, anyway, so why not go with Santana and be happier and have more opportunities for success?”

Brittany stares at Blaine with wide eyes.

“See, I told you it wasn’t the end of the world,” Blaine mutters, fidgeting with the fabric of his pajama pants.

Brittany flings herself on Blaine. He thinks he won’t ever be able to breathe again, the strength of her hug is so fierce. The girl’s got serious muscle.

“You’re the best Warbler friend anyone could ask for,” Brittany says, still hugging him. “I didn’t even need the Doctor. You were better.”

He hugs back. “You’re pretty awesome, too, Britt.”

They keep hugging for awhile, just because Brittany isn’t letting go and Blaine doesn’t really feel like making her. That is, until his arm starts to tingle weirdly.

“How about we watch the rest of this episode and then we can go find some ice cream?” he suggests.

“Ice cream is for when you’re sad,” Brittany says, untangling herself from him.

Blaine shakes his head. “You can drown your sorrows in a bunch of ice cream all by yourself. Or you can make ice cream cones with one of your best friends because you’re happy and it’s fun.”

\---

 _June 2, 2012_

Blaine fidgets with the cuffs of his blazer and reaches up to adjust his tie. As often as he’s worn the thing, and as sad as he knows he’ll be to take it off for the last time when this is over, it was _not_ made for standing around on the grounds of Dalton in the sweltering heat.

“You’re so grown up,” his mother sniffles, reaching out to hug him yet again. He hugs her back.

“Calm down, Mom, the ceremony hasn’t even started yet,” he says over her shoulder, rolling his eyes.

“My little boy,” she adds, stepping back and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“ _Mom_ ,” Blaine complains. He’s kind of glad that he never made really good friends with anybody at Dalton--at least he doesn’t need to worry about them seeing his mother all in tears over him.

“Blaine!” He turns around to see Mike waving at him from across the field, flanked by Puck, Kurt, and Brittany. He waves back and turns to make sure his parents are aware he’s leaving them alone for a minute.

“Go say hi to your friends,” his father says before Blaine can even open his mouth. He has a hand on Blaine’s mother’s shoulder, and she waves him off as well.

Blaine jogs across the field, meeting the group halfway. “Hi, guys! I didn’t know you were coming.”

“You came to our graduation,” Kurt points out. “You even went to prom with Puckerman.”

“Blaine was at prom?” Brittany asks.

“Only for, like, five minutes,” Puck clarifies. “Shit was boring.”

“Puck got me to ask your dad if he could get us tickets to the ceremony,” Mike explains. “Well, I was _going_ to ask your mom, but then your dad was the only one home... whatever. We’re here, bro.”

“And just _where_ are all the cute guys hiding?” Kurt asks, bouncing on his toes to scan the field of people beyond Blaine’s head. “I know I saw some before...”

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Brittany asks.

Kurt shoots her a dirty look. “No.”

“Right this way,” Blaine interrupts, waylaying what’s sure to be an awkward conversation if Brittany’s allowed to ask anymore questions. “You guys can find somewhere to sit.”

He falls into step next to Puck. “It was nice of you to come,” he says.

Puck shrugs. “Only right that I do, I thought. You’ll be heading off to New York to shack up with Hummel while I go to State, so I need to get in some time with you now. Then Mikey over there ended up scoring extra tickets, so there went that plan.”

Blaine laughs. “You’re still getting in time with me! Besides, it’s actually just going to be me sitting up there on those bleachers sweating my ass off in this uniform while various people drone on and on.”

“Ah, yes, but I get to stare at you for all that time and no one can question me,” Puck quips.

“I can,” Mike chimes in.

“You’re just bitter, Chang,” Puck shoots back. “Your girl isn’t as good in bed as my boy.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “And what would you know about how good Tina is in bed?”

“Tina’s a good kisser,” Brittany says. They all stop walking for a moment and stare at her. “What? We were--”

“I don’t even want to know,” Kurt says, holding up a hand for Brittany to stop and starting to walk again.

“It was just a game, though, Mike, so don’t worry,” Brittany clarifies anyway.

“I... don’t think I was, really.”

“This is a good spot,” Kurt decides, sliding in a few chairs and sitting down. They’re about five rows back from the front, and Blaine has to agree that it is a good spot.

“Save seats for my parents, okay? I’ll send them this way.”

Puck nods and shoos Kurt down two more chairs in order to save the two on the aisle. Blaine checks the time.

“See you guys in a bit, okay?”

“Good luck, Blaine!” Brittany says, waving.

“Knock ‘em dead in that polyester blend,” Kurt says. “I expect a strut to get your diploma.”

Blaine laughs. “It would never top yours.” He waves and heads up to the bleachers, where students are already assembling.

About an hour and a half later, Blaine is tired and slightly sticky, the piece of paper that secures his future clutched in one hand while the other is shaken by his father.

“I’m proud of you, Blaine,” his father says. “I know at times we have our differences, and I still think studying theatre is a risky move, but you’re my son.”

Blaine stares at his father, still grasping his hand, though they’ve stopped shaking.

His father clears his throat. “And, um, your mother expects you home for all major holidays so that she may cook a lot of food with which to fatten you up.”

“Your boyfriend is always welcome, too,” his mother pipes up. His father looks like he wants to protest this, but she gives him a look, and he keeps his mouth shut.

Blaine, who had sat through the supposedly moving farewell speech given by the valedictorian and led the senior Warblers in one last refrain without wanting to cry once, now feels tears building up behind his eyes. He pulls his father into a quick hug.

“Thanks, Dad,” he says, surreptitiously wiping his eyes on his blazer behind his back. He lets go and turns to his mom to hug her. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Are you going to catch a ride home with your friends?” his father asks, eyeing someone over Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine turns to see Puck coming up behind him.

“Yeah, I think I will. Is that all right?”

“It’s fine,” his mother says.

Blaine waves and turns back to Puck. Puck slings an arm over Blaine’s shoulders and starts walking toward where Blaine can see the others waiting.

“Did you have a good time?” Blaine asks, sliding his own arm around Puck’s waist.

“The good times are only just beginning!” Puck quips. “I liked the singing best.”

Blaine smiles. “Why thank you.”

“Your strut needs some work!” Kurt calls out as they draw nearer.

“I told you it wouldn’t be as good as yours!” Blaine calls back.

“I fell asleep,” Brittany informs Blaine.

“She didn’t actually,” Mike amends. “Just sort of zoned out and the heat got to her.”

“Are you okay?” Blaine asks.

“I’m fit as a violin.”

“Fiddle,” Kurt corrects.

“Oh. That’s why it sounds wrong.” Brittany shrugs.

“Anyway, Tina and Quinn are back at Kurt’s place setting up a party for the members of New Directions and friends to get down and dirty one last time at, so let’s go,” Mike says.

“Yeah, if I don’t get back there Finn will probably eat all the food he’s supposed to be leaving for everyone,” Kurt agrees.

They all start walking toward the parking lot, and Blaine hangs back to talk to Mike.

“Down and dirty?” he asks quietly.

Mike snorts. “That’s how parties with New Directions tend to go.”

Blaine laughs. “True enough.” They walk quietly for a few moments before Blaine asks, “Hey, Mike?”

“Mhm?”

“Are you scared to move out to California?”

Mike considers this for a moment. “A bit, yeah. I’m scared about being across the country from my family and you and Tina, especially, but Brittany and Santana aren’t going to be too far from Berkeley, so I’ll have familiar faces if I really need them.” He socks Blaine lightly on the shoulder. “What about you? Scared of big bad New York?”

“A bit. But I’ve got Kurt, so it’ll be fine. And Rachel, too,” he adds. “I’ll miss you, though. I’ve spent my whole life with you next door and now you’re going to be in California? What the hell, Michael.”

Mike laughs. “Not your whole life,” he corrects. “I remember the day you moved in. I was really excited.”

“And I hid behind my mother,” Blaine says, laughing.

“So did I,” Mike says.

Blaine looks down at the pavement of the parking lot they’re now walking across. He grabs Mike’s hand in his own and swings them back and forth.

“Why are you holding my hand?” Mike asks, stopping.

“To make you feel better,” Blaine replies simply. He lowers his voice. “To make me feel better, too.”

Mike stares at Blaine for a minute, then bursts out laughing. “I think that was the sappiest thing you’ve ever done.”

Blaine grins. “But you remembered.”

“Hey! Losers! Are you ready to go?” Puck shouts from the vehicle.

“Hell yeah, we’re ready!” Blaine calls back, and he drags Mike over to the car, both of them still laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to participate in the [Blaine Big Bang](http://beyond-dapper.livejournal.com/tag/!blainebigbang) at beyond_dapper, so I asked one of my mutual tumblr followers that I know has a love of Blaine what she would like to see me write about. This story was inspired entirely by her answer, though it did branch out a bit (read: a lot). You can see that original question and answer [here](http://mackiilove.tumblr.com/post/4945591118/hi-macki-d-so-i-have-a-question-lol-thats-weird), and a huge thank you to Macki for it.
> 
> If you have any questions about my writing thought process (it’s rather jumbled and fun) or my story headcanons (they’re extensive and somewhat odd) for any of my characters or the story in general (or anything!), don’t hesitate to leave a comment or drop me a line in my [tumblr ask box](http://extraordinarilyunordinary.tumblr.com/ask)!


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